


Last Part of the Story

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Death, Cruciatus, Dark, Draco takes care of Harry, Good Draco Malfoy, Harry takes care of Draco, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Malfoy Manor, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Permanent Injury, Protective Draco Malfoy, Protective Harry Potter, Sad Ending, body massages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2020-09-07 12:53:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20309827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Keeping Potter safe from them—it may be the one thing Draco has ever done right in his life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is not happy and it will not end happy either. There will be character death.  
There are dark themes, not all graphic, but still brutal. Please beware.
> 
> The title has recently been changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for physical torture/abuse

Harry could barely see anything without his glasses, but he could smell the dampness and mildew of the walls, and a combination of other terrible and foul scents, some unidentifiable, but mostly sweat and blood and vomit. He could perceive the dimness of the lights in the room, and it was so very dim, almost black in the pervading blur of his vision. There was a formless blob of something here, at the distant corner, paler than everything else around him.

His hands were chained to the wall beside him, the ropes that previously tied his hands together gone. He could feel his rounded glasses digging into his thigh from the pocket of his trousers. He craved to put them on the bridge of his nose, to finally be able to see, to not feel even more vulnerable and defenseless and panicked than he already felt, but he couldn't. Not yet. They took his wand, but thankfully, they never checked his pockets, for if they did, if they had found his trademark glasses, it might have solidified their presumption that he was indeed Harry Potter, and the longer that could be avoided, the better.

He had no clue why they had brought him here and thrown him into this corner. Bellatrix had demanded all prisoners to be sent down to the basement, except for Harry and Hermione. The Snatchers had spoken among themselves, but Harry hadn't been able to hear what they were saying over Hermione's horrible screams as Bellatrix Crucio'ed her in front of him, hadn't been able to think or focus past his panic and horror at the thought of his best friend underneath that wretched, deranged witch. He remembered vague observations of hearing Greyback's sneering tone, Narcissa sounding desperate and aghast and on the verge of tears for whatever reason, and Lucius appearing gaunt and hollow as if he was fresh out of Azkaban as he eyed him closely.

They had then separated him from his friends, Ron, Luna, Seamus and Griphook locked up in the basement, Hermione left with Bellatrix and tortured. He could only desperately hope that they all somehow make it out alive and safe, and perhaps come find him, because by the looks of it, they had more of a chance to escape their captivity than he did.

That made the despair rise within Harry—he tried to stuff it down. He had to believe that his friends would make it out, that he would too. There wasn't any other choice, because the only other thing left to believe was that they would all be dead, and Voldemort would win and reign over the world.

Harry knew they were still in the room. Greyback and Rowle. He could hear their scuffing of feet up ahead at a distant corner of the suffocatingly small room, hear them hissing words, hear a small, choked noise of fear and pain, which meant somebody else was there with him.

"You're gonna give us a good answer, aren't you, pretty?" Greyback was muttering. "Tell you what, you confirm Harry Potter's identity here, and you get yourself a guaranteed supply of food and water for the week. How does that sound?"

The pale, formless blob was wrenched upright, a high scream of agony and terror tearing out of him (it sounded like a him), and dragged nearer to Harry, by the sounds of scraping and scuffing against the floor. He was making these horrible, anguished sounds, helpless moaning gasps ripping out of him until they left him breathless, and then completely silent by the time the pale blob was right in front of his face. Harry couldn't tell if he had gone quiet or if he just couldn't get in the air to make any more noises.

And then there was one strangled, hitched gasp that went choked-off half-way through, as if he was in too much pain and didn't have enough air to inhale. The answer had turned out to be the latter.

"Is this Harry Potter?" Rowle asked, his voice cold.

Silence.

The blob was shaken violently in front of him, which forced out a cry of pain from him. It seemed to hurt him immensely whenever they moved him in any way. Harry desperately hoped the boy, whoever it was, couldn't recognize him, because if he did and he told them, that meant guaranteed death for Harry here and for his friends at the Manor. As soon as the men discovered who he was, they would press down on the Dark Mark on their forearms and call Voldemort over.

"Answer me!" Rowle hissed.

The boy was breathing hard and fast, panic and pain. "I don't know," he sobbed, and Harry froze to a still at the voice. The boy had sounded far too much like…

No. It couldn't be.

It wouldn't make sense at all.

Harry heard a hard thud, like something colliding with bone, the blurred form jolting as the boy screamed again, breaking into more gasps, now full-out sobbing. Harry's heart pounded hard in his chest, his mind barricaded and scattered with terror, and he couldn't help but remember Hermione screaming like this too, feeling sick as both of them rang together in his head, mingling.

"Yes. Or no?" Rowle gritted out.

"P-please. I don't know, please," he cried feebly, incoherent mumble of words that Harry barely would have understood if they weren't so close to each other.

It was Malfoy.

It sounded like Malfoy.

Why were they hurting him, someone of their own kind? What was the point of this?

Harry felt a conflicted sense of relief that Malfoy didn't know it was him. He was conflicted about it because he was fairly certain Malfoy would have recognized him easily, having spent six years together in a school and too much time glaring into each other's faces back then, but he must have been in too much pain to be able to focus enough on Harry to identify him.

"I-It could be him," Malfoy forced out with haste, thick and feeble and sounding like he was on the verge of passing out, as if trying to compensate by giving a somewhat more solid answer, even though it wasn't solid at all. "B-but I can't—c-can't tell—" He inhaled sharply, trying to gain air. 

Malfoy's hazy form then abruptly vanished from his vision, the sound of flesh violently colliding with ground, another high, blood-curdling scream that rattled into Harry's chest.

"Fucking useless you are, aren't you, you stupid little shit?"

There was silence, and then a hard sob that seemed to suck every bit of air out of him at the end of it, and then, barely even audible, "N-no—ple—"

"_Crucio!_"

The screams went on and on and on.

*******

Harry didn't know how long it lasted. It must have been hours, or so it felt like, but eventually, they left. They finally left, the heavy door closing with a click. The screams were still echoing in his head, and his heart was sick and hammering. The room smelled of bile and sweat.

He kept thinking of all his friends, particularly Hermione after what had just happened, desperately praying to whatever would listen that she was okay and alive, because to imagine anything else made him want to curl up and die right here. He'd already lost too much, Sirius and Hedwig and Mad-Eye and Cedric and Dumbledore, and if he had to lose one of the best people he had ever met, he didn't know what he would do with himself. She along with Ron were one of the biggest reasons he lived and fought, and if she was gone, then one of the biggest reasons he had to fight and live would leave with her too.

No. No, he had to believe she was okay, that Bellatrix left her alive, that they all made it out alive somehow.

Harry quickly reached into his pockets for his glasses, putting them on even though it hurt his swollen and aching face. He wasn't worried about Malfoy seeing him right now, since he was obviously not conscious, but he wanted to check on him. Greyback and Rowle hadn't held back with him at all.

The blur in his vision cleared, everything coming into sharp focus. He could now make out all the clear outlines and edges of all that surrounded him, of the room, small and dank and dimly lit. He could see Malfoy's sprawled form just a few feet away, clad in an oversized, filthy shirt that reached only just above his knobby knees. Harry could see the rise and fall of his narrow ribs, his eyes closed and his face pinched in profound unease, and the knots of anxiety loosened in his chest. Harry breathed, exhaling in relief. Malfoy was alive, even if in terrible shape. Harry could see he was covered in bruises and blood. Beneath him were dried smears of blood too.

Harry could not think why they were keeping him here, why they were doing this to him. Was he not one of them? Perhaps not so willingly anymore, but they didn't really know that, and he was still a Death-Eater. He bore the same Dark Mark that Rowle did, shared the same blood-purist beliefs as Voldemort and his followers did. He had seen punishment at the madman's hands, in the many visions his mental connection with Voldemort provided him, but he had never seen this. 

They may have been enemies, once—perhaps not anymore, not really—and Malfoy had several traits and values that Harry despised, his bigotry for one, but Harry did not want this to happen to him, did not want to see him like this, being in so much pain.

It was a very long while after, of trying to think of ways to escape and devising plans that only seemed that they would end in failure and in his identity coming out, that Malfoy awoke, fingers twitching and his head stirring. He didn't move in any other way, however. Harry did not bother to take off his glasses, certain that Malfoy wouldn't be able to see him properly in the corner the way Harry could see him in the dim moonlight through the small window on the wall.

Harry didn't know how long the Stinging Hex would last. He didn't know what would happen when it wore off, or if Malfoy would manage to recognize him before it did. He would surely try to buy leniency and mercy for himself at the hands of his tormentors. 

It was wishful thinking to hope he was found and rescued, or that he found his way out, before that could happen. The Stinging Hex would hardly last more than a few hours since it was cast.

Malfoy's silver eyes opened to the ceiling, half-mast and heavy-lidded with pain, his sweat-sheened, ashen face slack, his lips parted. Harry watched him come back to his surroundings, something inside him deeply unsettled at the sight of his sickly state. He wanted to say something, but he couldn't risk Malfoy recognizing his voice. 

Malfoy retched and gagged, and then wriggled, painstakingly slow even in his franticness to roll over to his side in order to avoid choking on his own vomit, tremors running up and down his body. His eyes rolled into the back of his head as he gagged again, his face crumpling in anguish and malaise as tears streamed down his cheeks. 

Nothing came out except a few strings of bile. 

Harry thought about crossing the few feet between them, scooting forward to help him turn to his side, but he was too afraid getting so close would end up in him being figured out.

He felt terrible anyway when it occurred to him that he didn't know how long the other boy had been here, and how many times he'd had to do this by himself.

It was silent then. Harry had assumed that was how it would have stayed, but it seemed Malfoy had only been gathering his bearings.

And then he whispered, "Potter?" with a hitched breath, and Harry felt like someone had dunked him in freezing water, the blood in his veins turning to ice. Malfoy had somehow discovered that it was him, and Harry didn't know what it was that gave it away---

Malfoy whispered to him, as if afraid they might be heard, "My—parents. Do you… do you—know anything ab-about—"

"They're well," Harry murmured, almost just as quiet, realizing with a jolt of incredulity that Malfoy had known even before this. It seemed that he might have refused to give him away, but for how long? "I saw them at the Manor, before they brought me here."

Malfoy's face twisted painfully, his lips crumpled downward and parted as if he was about to cry, but no tears or sounds came out. His shoulder slipped slightly against the floor by the force of his emotions, as if he was about to fold over from them but couldn't, a shallow sob torn out of him. 

"They—they told me—" Malfoy's face crumpled again, as if the very thought of whatever they had told him hurt him physically. "H-he killed—them. I-I hoped—"

Harry scooted forward, tentative. He wondered if he was about to try and console a boy that was going to turn him over to Voldemort and his followers in the next minute, now that he'd gotten the answer about the welfare of his parents. It was that thought that made him stop half-way through, and then he wondered if he was a terrible person for thinking that he could have withheld that information from Malfoy to ensure his own security of life. 

And then he wondered if it even mattered, Malfoy telling them who he was, because the hex was going to wear off soon anyway, and if he wasn't found by the next time they came, which seemed beyond unlikely, then the end-result would be the same.

"They're alive. They're all right," Harry said softly. He remembered their gaunt faces, Malfoy's mother looking frail and ready to break, and his father's hollow and haunted eyes. "They're worried though, of course."

Malfoy's lips quivered, and he bit his bottom lip. He didn't say anything more.

"Why… why are they keeping you here?" Harry didn't know if Malfoy would be able to hold a conversation, or if he would even want to with _ him _ given their history, but the question nagged at him. Why hurt another Death-Eater so terribly, the way they would hurt muggles and muggleborns?

The silence went on too long, and Harry began to think no answer would come his way.

"Dumbledore…" Malfoy mumbled. Harry tried to lean a bit closer to hear him better. "I didn't—kill. H-he wondered why. He thought—n-not devoted—so he wanted to… to make...example." Malfoy swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut, drained and breathless as if it was taking more energy than he had to talk. Harry wondered why he bothered to humour him in this way. Perhaps it was because he hadn't had much harmless company in a while. "For those...who may be...disloyal and…disobe—bedient."

That was it, then, the reason they had hurt him so bad that he could hardly move or speak. Malfoy hadn't been able to kill one of the most powerful wizards in history with his own hands, had only not committed murder. Malfoy hadn't been fully loyal and obedient to the deranged wizard, made clear by his reluctance to carry out Voldemort's orders.

"Will you—talk—to me?" Malfoy whispered. 

He felt a swell of emotion in his throat, a dull ache in his chest that burned up to his eyes, unsure of why the simple request had provoked such a reaction. Mingling with it was fury, flowing through his veins like his blood was oil, meeting at the deep centre of his chest like a ball of flames. Perhaps it was also the months of being on the run in a forest, the exhaustion and starvation and thirst, and the terror that had made a pit in his gut at the thought of all his friends being—at the thought of them getting hurt, and at the thought of never being found, and the thought of Voldemort winning and millions dying because he had failed, and then this. Malfoy. The sight of his sickly, whitewashed face and body, and the idea that he had been made to believe he was all alone in the world, his family dead, for however long he had been here. All the horrors of the world, the knowledge of how dark and awful it was, accumulating in his mind and into the leaden weight in his chest and pressing into the back of his eyeballs.

It all made his chest raw, too raw and easy to burn, and he couldn't speak for fear that he would lose all control.

"S'just...been...v-very quiet." 

In his mind, Harry tried to put him next to the boy he used to be back at Hogwarts. They hardly felt like the same people anymore. There was no hatred or malice in his grey eyes, just the quiver of desperate loneliness and the droop of fatigue and anguish.

Harry swallowed hard, looking down into his hands. He didn't know what to talk about. What did you talk about with your old foe that looked to you in need of distraction from their anguish and loneliness? Right now, all he could think about was his friends, and whether they had escaped captivity at the Manor, and the slow, torturous death that might lay ahead of him. It felt too personal and vulnerable to share.

"Are you going to turn me in?"

"Don't think—I'll have to." Malfoy didn't sound mirthful or sarcastic, only factual. Either way, the answer didn't sound promising.

"If the hex doesn't wear off by then?"

The silence reigned, then. Harry had expected an instant answer along the lines of the affirmative.

Instead, what he received in response was a very surprising and soft, "No."

Harry's brows shot up to his hairline. He couldn't help but ask, "Why not? It'll definitely earn you some favours, if nothing else." And then he wasn't sure if he should have said that, lest he changed Malfoy's mind after all.

Malfoy's shoulders twitched slightly, in some feeble shrug. "It ends the same."

Harry didn't entirely know if he understood what that meant. He didn't know if he wanted to.

*******

On the day they took him away and brought him here, Draco remembered his father shaking and pale, his mother crying and begging to the Dark Lord to let him take his place. The Dark Lord did not listen. If anything, Draco was fairly certain his parents' mourn and distress encouraged him even more.

He didn't want to remember what happened after that, what happened before they brought him here and threw him in. He could still hear his mother's screams, his father crying silently beside her, crumpled to the floor of their living room.

They told him the next day that his parents were dead, two bolts of green light from the end of the Dark Lord's wand. He bounced between being suspended in pure and utter disbelief and denial (if he didn't see it, it didn't happen) and the horrible days when he couldn't control his mind, couldn't stop himself from falling for it, from seeing through his own denial because he knew if he let it be true in his mind, it would kill him. 

On those days, he had wept so hard he couldn't breathe, even when it had hurt everywhere and he didn't know what to do with it all, but it had hurt so much inside that it almost didn't matter. He had hoped that the day they went too far would come soon, because if his parents weren't out there anyway, then he had nothing to get out to, to go back to. Nothing had mattered then.

They'd have died because of him. It was only fair that he died too, all alone in his misery, all alone in the world. Maybe this way, he could be with them again.

And then they put Potter here, and suddenly he wasn't alone.

And then he told Draco that he hadn't been orphaned at all. He talked to him softly, in a way nobody had for a very long time, when he told him his parents were all right and alive, and he kept talking to him when Draco asked him to, even when their history as well as the nature and dynamic of their relationship demanded that Potter should not give a damn what Draco wanted of him.

"How'd they get—get you?" He hated how airy and frail and sickly his voice came out, nearly a whisper that seemed to spend much of his breaths and require much focus, but Potter always leaned closer where he was to listen, just a few feet away. He could come closer if he wanted to, could come right next to Draco. The length of the shackles around his ankles would have allowed it. But he didn't, and Draco didn't want to dwell on why, even though it was obvious enough.

Potter was silent. Either he was, perhaps, reluctant to answer, or he was contemplating on how to best word his response, or he wasn't going to answer at all.

"It was my stupidity," Potter finally said, sounding more an admittance or a confession than anything, quiet and rueful. "I...I said his name. They found out where we were. We were in the forests, running, and they caught us. The Snatchers. Hermione— she casted his stinging hex on me, to disguise me, before they did." Draco could have worked that out on his own. Granger was the smartest out of all of them, a fact that he had once begrudged and hated. Now, it might be one of the things that would save them all. "They took us to the Malfoy Manor—your home—your mother opened the door. They dragged my friends down to the basement, but they brought me here."

They wanted to keep him separate from his friends, ensure he could never escape in case he did turn out to be Harry Potter. Part of it might have also been because they had hoped to scare Draco into identifying him.

But Draco had had enough time to work it all out, and he realized this: no matter what Draco did, he was going to be in for a world of excruciating pain anyway here. He was already in it, and it was never going to stop. It could only get worse, but never better, and some days, not as worse was preferable, but it was still agony. Whatever he did or didn't do to appease them, they were going to hurt him, if not today, then certainly tomorrow. They were going to Crucio him and they were going light his nerves on fire as he screamed and they were going to hold him in it for hours, and leave him with muscles so cramped and knotted and stiff that he couldn't move without wanting to cry, and they were going to break his bones and put some of them back together if they felt like it, just so it would hurt some more. They were going to starve and dehydrate him and give him the bare minimum to survive, only. And Greyback was never going to stop—

Draco swallowed hard, feeling the lurch of sickness in his gut on top of the ever-pervading nausea already present in his body. Maybe that would stop now, since they wouldn't be alone anymore. He didn't know if that made any difference, but he hoped it did.

And he realized this: Potter was the only hope any of them had.

More than anything, now, Potter was the only hope his parents had. He didn't know if Potter could do anything for him, if he could save Draco (and that was if he would even want to), but he knew he could save his parents. Now that he had learned they were still here, that they were alive, had known what it was like to feel the grief of their loss (even if it hadn't been real) and to feel a world without them, he could not bear to let that loss be real, to let that world be real.

And the only person who could make sure of this was Potter.

He could convince him to. He could beg him to, to ensure his parents walked out of this war alive and free, for him to spare them the lifetime of Azkaban and the Dementor's Kiss in the aftermath. He and Potter had bad history, partially due to fault of his own, but Potter was a bleeding-hearted fool. He would hardly refuse Draco when he was in the state he was in, would he?

Then again, Draco didn't know if his bleeding-hearted foolishness would apply to someone like him, someone who had made Potter's already hellish life even more hellish for years and years, who had bullied his friends based on race and financial status, a Death-Eater whose black-inked Dark Mark was so very visible on his forearm at the moment as a reminder of who he truly was, who had a large part in the murder of Potter's friend and favourite Headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore.

The familiar boulders of guilt and remorse weighed down his chest, the shame churning his already nauseated stomach. It was just one more thing that Draco was paying for now, not only in the karmic sense, but in the sense that, perhaps, if Dumbledore hadn't died because of him, if he had gotten Draco and his family to safety, none of this would have happened.

This was a perfect opportunity, even if the circumstances were far from perfect. Draco would never have had a chance before to even get to _ talk _ to Potter, let alone convince him to secure anything for his parents, and now he did. He could guarantee liberty and safety for them after the war by Potter, even if what happened to them now was less in Potter's hands and more in the Dark Lord's and their own. Draco briefly considered securing his own freedom and escape, in momentary and overwhelming desperation and desire, and then shot down the thought immediately. Not only would Potter not want to bother, but it would be asking too much of him. 

Taking him along would nearly guarantee Potter's death, because the Dark Lord would know where to find Draco. Even without that, he was crippled, his body too ruined now for it to be easy to take him along, for him to be of any help or use or contribution anymore. He would only be a burden, would only slow Potter down at a great risk to his life, even if there would be people coming from the outside to get Potter out. Unlike for Draco, it was a must that Potter left this place alive and unscathed, because too much rested on it, including the fate of his parents. The Dark Lord needed to be destroyed, so that his family could finally be free of him.

If Draco died here, it would hardly matter. 

But if Potter died, millions of people died with him. His mother and father, everything that Draco held dear, died with him. 

He wasn't even sure if he wanted the life he had waiting for him out there, his body never to be what it once was, never to be functional again in the same way, ever. But even so, the thought of the remaining alternative seemed to suck the air out of him. He swallowed hard. The thought of it was daunting, painful, to die alone in this cell, his body broken, tormented and in anguish and degraded in every way possible, with nothing to remember him or like him for. Nobody outside of his parents would miss him, or know, or care that he was gone.

Draco wished, not for the first time, that he was anyone other than Draco Malfoy, that he had lived a far different life than the one he had lived, had been a far different and better person than the one he had been. 

He watched Potter in the very dim light. Potter had gone quiet too, had gotten lost in his own thoughts. He had looked terrible and exhausted when Draco could see him, all hollow-eyed and drained of colour and energy. Draco looked at the green-eyed boy, the silhouette of him in the dark, and wished he could reverse time and start everything over. He would do everything right, and they would be friends, and Potter would teach him how to be good, and he would save him.

Draco could have been good, then, could have been saved, and he could have been undeserving of everything that was happening to him now. Potter would have missed him, and he would have known and cared that he was gone, like he would for everyone else, for anyone else.

Perhaps none of this would have even happened in the first place. 

It was just one more thing he was paying for.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dark themes (implied rape) will be present in this chapter, but they aren't strongly graphic. Despite this, it's brutal, so proceed with caution.

By the next time they came, Potter's face had gone back to normal. 

The puffiness had worn off, both his eyes visible and the green of them stunningly bright behind his glasses, under the sunlight streaming in through a small window onto his face. He had just woken up, raven-black hair wild and all over. 

Draco's heart halted to a stop at the sound of footsteps outside the door, one of them heavier than the other. He swallowed hard, his hands shaking against the ground in front of him, his heart hammering in his sternum. The fear and anxiety clawed at his gut, clenching like fingers around it.

The door clicked and slowly creaked open, heavy metal swinging wider. The tall, large form of the werewolf, Greyback, walked inside through the gap, followed by Rowle, and Draco's eyes burned with tears, terror and horrible images assailing his mind. The sickness welled up from his stomach to his throat. He begged to whatever was willing to listen to someone like him that today would be different, that they wouldn't hurt him today. It was a foolish and futile hope that had never done him much good, but he hoped anyway.

They both paused as their gazes landed on Potter. Rowle cocked his head.

"Circe…"

Rowle slowly, carefully crossed the few steps between him and Potter, his gaze not budging from the shackled boy in the corner. Draco realized, then, that he did not know what they were going to do to Potter before they called the Dark Lord over. Would they hurt him too? What happened after Lord Voldemort reached him? What would become the rest of them if he killed Potter?

"Well, well, well… if it isn't Harry Potter, indeed…" Rowle murmured, slowly lowering down to his knee in a crouch in front of Potter. He leaned his face into Potter's, his head tilting as if he was closely observing him. "Seems we've had it right all along, then."

Potter's breaths were shallow and irregular, but he was staring coldly at Rowle head-on, right in the eyes. Draco envied his courage and bravery. He had started to cry before Rowle had even said the word _ Crucio _, before Greyback had even touched him, before he even knew what he was going to do to him, and had never been able to look any of them in the eye out of terror.

"We've got you now, boy, and there's no escaping this time. The Dark Lord… he comes now, when we call him, and then you're all his. And _ I _ will be rewarded—"

"Why do you all keep forgetting," Greyback growled. "Just who exactly captured the Potter boy?"

"Why, we can share the glory, can we not, Greyback? It was my idea to bring him here, after all. Or else he perhaps would have escaped along—"

"I want the credit as it's due. I want it to be told to the Dark Lord as it is. I want my bloody _ moment,_ Rowle. This is the only chance I have to prove myself to him."

Rowle sighed. "Yes, yes, Greyback. Of course. The events will be told as they happened. I'm certain the Dark Lord will be very pleased with you. Now…" Draco could hear the smile in his voice. Rowle stood up and stepped back, away from Potter's reach. He slid back the sleeve of his shirt, revealing the Dark Mark on his forearm. Draco could see the panic on Potter's face, green eyes widening behind his rounded glasses as he tracked Rowle, and Draco could feel his own reason for anxiety shift.

If Potter died, then it was over. It was over for all of them, for the only two people that mattered to Draco. He couldn't… this couldn't happen. This could not happen. They could not kill the only person who had any chance at saving the Wizarding World. Draco wracked his brain for something, anything, a reason or a lie that would stall the death of the Boy Who Lived until he was emancipated, something that would keep him alive and out of the Dark Lord's clutches until somebody came for Potter.

Potter's breathing was erratic, his chest jouncing high and low. Yet, there didn't seem to be a thing either of them could do. Rowle was about to press down on the Dark Mark, his fingers a centimetre away, and Draco couldn't—

"Rowle!" He didn't realize who said it for a long moment. Rowle had stilled. And Draco realized it had been his own voice, croaky and hoarse and far too strong than he thought he was capable of.

And then, in some burst of desperation, his mind finally _ worked._ He didn't know if they would buy it, but it was all he had. It was all Potter had.

He swallowed hard. "Potter—h-he destroyed a fragment." Draco was surprised that he could speak at all, that his voice wasn't falling apart the way it should, that he wasn't choking on his lie the way his heart choked with terror and horror. He didn't know what he was doing, the words feeling as if they came from someone else, because up until now, he had never been able to say anything to them except beg for mercy. He was lying, and it wouldn't take all that long for them to confirm the truth for themselves, but it was desperate and perhaps, _ perhaps, _by some miracle, it would turn out to be enough. It would turn out well. "The Dark Lord… he—he may be ill. His temperament would be rather—r-rather unpredictable during this time—he might kill Potter, but he'll—kill the rest of us t-too, if you call him now."

All of Lord Voldemort's followers knew about the fragments of his soul, stored in pieces and objects. Nobody knew what those pieces and objects were, but it was what made it possible for the Dark Lord to be resurrected. They also knew Potter and his friends had been on a mission to destroy them all, the knowledge made rather public by the green bolts of light taking over a whole room after each time.

The Dark Lord was weakened and ill for a period of time after each one was lost, but not enough to render him incapable of killing a roomful of people in his fits of rage. Eventually, he was restored to his prior strength under the care of Bellatrix Lestrange and Severus Snape as well as a few others, the only people he considered far too competent and loyal to be easily disposed of.

Rowle and Greyback were struck speechless at the falsified news. Greyback turned to Potter. "Is this true, boy?"

Potter's gaze flicked to Draco, and then back up to Rowle and Greyback. "The Locket of Regulus Black. We destroyed it."

Draco hadn't known that was where one of the fragments was stored, and neither had Rowle nor Greyback, but somehow, having an exact name of the object made it sound much truer. Draco didn't know if it was, but if by coincidence, they had obliterated one just before Potter got here, then it seemed that luck was on the Chosen One's side.

The two men appeared distressed at the confirmation. Whether or not they had any doubt about Potter's statement was unclear, but it would be foolish to take a risk anyway.

"Surely the Dark Lord would be ecstatic at the capture of the Potter boy?" Rowle said, even as he sounded uncertain. "Surely he would spare us, then."

"Would he overlook the escape of Harry Potter's friends?" Greyback mumbled.

Draco saw Potter's face, then, the green eyes growing rounded and wide, darting between the two of them. There was a stilted heave in his chest of a large, uneven breath, and then he was left sagging back against the wall upon a shuddering exhale, the billow of relief so immense on his expression that he looked on the verge of tears. Neither Rowle nor Greyback noticed, too engrossed in their discussion as to whether or not it was best to summon the Dark Lord.

"That is not for us to bear the consequences of!" Rowle snapped. "But he _ would _ be angry if we did not inform him that we have the Potter boy right away."

"At least he would be much more level-headed, then!" Greyback gritted out. "He may be appeased. Right now, however, the Dark Lord would not hesitate to dispose of us, should he feel the urge to. He is enraged and unwell, a severely dangerous combination."

Rowle's fists clenched, his jaw tight and his pale eyes ablaze. He was angry and distressed. Draco tried to stay as quiet and unnoticed as possible, in the hopes that they would not be reminded of his existence and find it fit to vent their fury and disappointment out on him. He did not know if they would turn to Potter instead this time, but that didn't appear much preferable either to the more logical part of his mind.

When Rowle's cold gaze landed on him, Draco remembered that such hopes had only ever been futile.

"You ought to remember your place, traitor." Rowle cocked his white-haired head. Draco's insides lurched with terror and nausea, already finding himself shrinking back, shaking his head. There were pleas forming on the tip of his tongue. "I think you've forgotten that speaking out of turn is not within your rights."

One flick of a wand was all it took, and Draco went screaming again.

***

When it was over, and Draco was left to slump bonelessly to the ground, he was ready to pass out, this time not to be awoken again by another bout of the Cruciatus curse. Every muscle in his body was aching and stiff, cramped from the severe contractions of his body. He was shaking and crying.

Rowle left. Greyback stayed, and Draco nearly sobbed, but he didn't have anything left in him to. _ Please let me pass out_, he begged, to whatever it was that kept refusing to listen to his prayers. _ Circe,_ _please _.

Greyback was strung up and tense, his shoulders tight and rigid. He walked over to him, grabbed him by his shoulder and hauled him onto his back roughly.

"Going to be good for me, pretty?" Greyback grunted.

Nothing in Draco would cooperate enough for an answer. Sometimes that made Greyback angry, when he didn't respond. He couldn't. He tried to, but he couldn't. He drifted away for a moment, his eyes falling shut in a blissful reprieve.

It was Potter's voice that snapped him right back into the living world. The first thing his mind read was _ anger_, causing alarm bells to in his head and awakening him somewhat. His heart was overworked, now a dull racing beat in his chest, but that didn't sound good. Anger was never good. Draco didn't know what he did to Potter at present time, but he didn't want Potter to be angry at him. 

The words took too long to register in his mind.

"Don't you think he's had enough?" Potter gritted out, sounding angry and greatly distressed. "You're going to kill him!"

Greyback's hand was still on his shoulder, frozen there. Draco opened his eyes, only managing to half-way through. The man in front of him was facing off to the side, where Potter had to be. He was grinning lazily.

"Would you rather I do it to you instead, boy?" It was a mockery. Greyback liked young girls. He only liked Draco because he looked delicate, and for the way he sounded and cried. Potter wasn't delicate at all. Potter didn't cry either.

There was silence. Draco could imagine the reluctance on Potter's face. For someone like Draco? Never.

"I won't do it to him, if you let me play with you instead."

Draco thought of Potter, screaming and crying too. He couldn't imagine Potter screaming and crying. Potter was too strong and brave. Maybe he could take it. Maybe he could take it in a way Draco couldn't. Draco hadn't known what to do with himself when it happened to him. How filthy and sick and ruined he had felt. First, shock. And then nothing. For the longest time, nothing.

And then it hit. All at once.

Anger. Rage. Disgust, he didn't know if at himself or them more.

And then, when all that drained away, broken.

Just broken.

He imagined Potter feeling that way too. Draco didn't know if Potter would still feel like saving the world after that. Draco didn't think he himself would, but he wasn't Potter either. He wasn't strong and brave and selfless. He thought of his parents. He tried to stop his mind from seeing their corpses instead. He thought of Potter being too broken to save the world and his parents. He had already looked so broken and exhausted as it was in that corner.

***

Harry couldn't speak, couldn't answer. He couldn't entirely work out what Greyback wanted to do to Malfoy, but there was something deeply disturbing and unsettling about the way he was speaking and how close he was to the sickly boy. Every fibre of his being resisted against the impulsive, larger than life words, _ do your worst_. That was exactly what Greyback was going to do, and Harry had no idea what that meant and he didn't think he wanted to know.

Greyback's back was to him, so he couldn't entirely see what he was doing. He moved up, no longer interested in Harry's response, and then he was settled right between Malfoy's legs, meaty fingers wrapped around his thighs under the large shirt. For a reason Harry couldn't entirely process, some vague, distant comprehension clicking in his barricaded mind, everything inside of him turned cold, like he was dunked into an icy lake.

"What the hell are you doing?" Harry grinded out, his voice shaking with anger and fear. "Get off of him, Greyback!"

He couldn't be doing that. He couldn't be… no. It was too far. It was too much. 

Greyback hummed carelessly. "Do you want to play instead, Potter?"

"Just… just get the bloody hell off of him. I don't know what you're playing at here—"

"That's not the answer I'm looking for."

Malfoy's face was slack with pain and exhaustion, ashen and grey and sweat-sheened. He was half-awake, his grey eyes half-opened and sunken in with weakness and fatigue, not moving at all. He was hurt. He was badly hurt. He didn't look like he could take any more. Merlin, what if he—

"You can hurt me," Harry forced himself to blurt out, not at all ready for what it meant, to even think of it. But the words came out as he stared at the sick boy, wondering if he was going to last another day. He hardly looked like he would.

Greyback arched an eyebrow. He clearly hadn't expected such a response. "Really?"

Malfoy shifted underneath the werewolf, then, looking far too out of it. His chest was rising and falling stiltedly, unevenly. "Please," he whispered, clear and loud in the silence. He sobbed, a shallow, feeble gasp of a sound. Harry felt a swell of a terrible sound in his own chest, constricting his throat. He felt helpless, powerless, felt scattered and scared. 

"Maybe another time, Potter," Greyback grunted breathlessly.

The rest happened so fast Harry couldn't process any of it, everything happening within seconds. Greyback's arm moving, his body shifting over and between Malfoy where he knelt, a fumble of his fingers at the front of his own trousers. The rest was all a blur, and Harry remembered the horror rattling inside his sternum, the cold jolt of panic and terror that shrivelled up his insides, and did not remember throwing his arms over his head when the back of Greyback's hips thrusted forward violently, staring wide-eyed at the empty spot of the floor in front of him as he shook and shook and shook.

He jolted hard, his mouth parted in horror, his eyes squeezing shut when the blood-curdling scream rippled through the room, like a little boy cornered by a monster in the hopes that it would make it go away. He couldn't remember if there were two screams instead of one. He remembered not remembering when he had started to cry to the sounds of Malfoy's choked, pained noises and gasping cries of agony, and then he cried harder when he stopped making sounds, but Greyback didn't.

"Stop," Harry mumbled, unable to stop crying, unable to move, hardly able to breathe, shudders of exhales that became sobs ripping out of him. He shook his head, arms clamped over his ears, over his head. "Stop it! STOP IT! STOP HURTING HIM!"

He didn't stop.

***

The heavy door clicked shut. Harry could not do anything but sit there for a long while, curled up and shaking and crying. He had expected terrible things, in some vague, terrifying comprehension with no actual idea of what those terrible things will be. He did not expect this, did not expect such horrible screams and sounds that did not belong to him and such vile and sickening images burned into the insides of his retinas, and he did not expect to become so weak and afraid in the face of it.

He had done _ nothing._

He couldn't get himself to do anything. Anything but sit there and fall apart like a child.

He still couldn't get himself to move, to stop shaking and crying. He needed to stop shaking and crying. He needed to move. He needed to check on Malfoy.

Harry forced himself to regain composure. _Stop crying_. _Stop bloody crying._ _Nothing even happened to you._ He brushed both his hands down his face to rid it of his tears and swallowed hard, twice, thrice. He breathed deeply, but he couldn't get them to even out and stop shuddering. He couldn't get himself to breathe right.

Harry crawled over to the unconscious boy and settled beside him. The length of the chains on his ankles ran out just as he reached a few inches away from Malfoy. He could see his chest rise and fall, slow and shallow breaths leaving him, as if he was in profound malaise and agony. Malfoy was shivering, whether from pain or troubled dreams or the cold. Harry shrugged off his jacket and spread it over the lower part of Malfoy's body to cover him up. The chill of the winter sent a trail of goosebumps all over his skin and down his spine.

He didn't know what else to do.

Harry sat there in silence beside his only companion until he couldn't, his deprived body, starved and dehydrated and fatigued, not being able to keep upright for long. He scooted back some feet away and laid down on the ground, not too close and not too far, prepared for a light slumber of cold, hard discomfort and haunted dreams of Sirius and Cedric and Dumbledore's deaths, or of his friends being dead at the Manor or Malfoy's screams or Voldemort killing him, or some combination of them.

He thought of his friends, his best friends, the immense relief he had felt at news of their escape from the Manor. His mind overran then soon, however, and now he had a hundred other things that he fretted over. What if they had gotten hurt? What if Hermione had gotten too hurt? What if they didn't all get out? What if they never found him before Voldemort caught news of his captivity? Where would they even start to search for him? 

For nearly the rest of the night, he got lost in his longing accompanied with memories for all those he had loved. He missed the Weasleys, missed Ginny, and Lupin and Tonks. He missed everyone he had lost, Hedwig. He missed Ron and Hermione right now, more than anything. He missed Ron's jokes, even in the darkest of times, sometimes the only thing that made the world feel less bleak and black and terrible. He missed the way he could make sense of things in ways Harry couldn't. He missed Hermione and her mother henning, her constant annoyance and nagging, her comforting touches. He missed the comparative safety and comfort he had with them. He wondered what they would say if they were here.

Harry could never want them to be here. Ever. But he wanted them to come and get him out, because it was getting hard to believe he could find a way himself.

Not without Malfoy, he couldn't. He had to get them both out of here. He couldn't… he couldn't leave him here. He didn't want to. He was too sick and hurt, and he would not last long here, where they would only keep hurting him, and he couldn't bear the thought of his fate if he didn't get out with him.

He stared at Malfoy's face in the dim moonlight, pale and scarlet-bruised eyes, and he tried to think, this was the boy who had spent years making he and his friends miserable. He tried to think, he had insulted his dead parents, taunted Ron and his family for their less wealthy financial state, Hermione for her blood, for not having magical parents. He called her a word that was terrible and oppressive to her kind for five years. He bullied his friend, Neville Longbottom. He was a marked Death-Eater. He cornered Albus Dumbledore and had a part in his demise, even if he was under duress.

This was the boy that refused to identify him, despite all the uncertainties as to whether or not it would even matter, just before they Crucio'd him for hours on end.

This was the boy that asked Harry to talk to him because it got too quiet.

This was the reason why Harry was still here, alive and relatively unharmed, and not in Voldemort's clutches instead.

Harry didn't know why he had done any of it. Perhaps Malfoy had had his own reasons for keeping him away from Voldemort, and none of those reasons had anything to do with Harry, but he kept him alive and that, he supposed, meant something.

***

Malfoy was awake by the time Harry opened his eyes, the faintest tinge of morning light shining through the small window on the wall.

Harry scrambled up into a sitting position upon seeing Malfoy's silver eyes boring into him, flicking away when green met them. Harry was somewhat embarrassed to be found sleeping so close to the other boy.

"Malfoy?" Harry leaned forward slightly, as close as his shackles allowed.

Malfoy's expression was the familiar sort of cold that Harry remembered from school, something entirely different from yesterday, scarlet-circled eyes rigid and icy. Harry suddenly felt at a loss on what to say or do, sensing that anything he did say or do would be unwelcome and rejected.

He seemed angry. Harry wondered if some of that anger was directed at him.

"Do you need anything?" Harry asked quietly.

Malfoy's pallid face twisted into a sneer. "I don't _ need—_your pity."

"Not pity."

"Just sod off, Potter," Malfoy gritted out.

And now he was right back to the Malfoy Harry knew, then. But Harry couldn't go back to being the Harry he was with him. He couldn't feel the anger and annoyance and hatred he used to feel at Malfoy for every insult or taunt, that familiar sneer or deadpan that used to set something ablaze in him, especially when accompanied with taunts. He couldn't. The only thing he could feel setting in was a weariness and sorrow that weighed him down and wanted to keep him quiet.

"Thank you," Harry said. He had to say it. What Malfoy did, for whatever reason, it certainly wasn't something easy or small. It may have been more to save his own life than Harry's, but it was still a great risk he took. "I… I wouldn't be here right now if you didn't—"

"I didn't do it for you, Potter," Malfoy snarled, the anger seeming to give him the energy he needed. "This whole _f—_fucking war, it's because of _ you! _So you're going to defeat _him_, and you're going to free my parents from that—that _bloody_ madman—" He stopped there, breathing hard and shallow. He schooled himself, grinded his jaw and plowed through. "And—and then you're going to keep them out of Azkaban, after the War. _ That _is your debt to me. Do you understand?"

Harry stared down at his hands. It was hardly something he could promise, no matter how much responsibility and all that rested on his victory weighed down on him. Up until now, he didn't have as much time to think. He had to keep going, keep doing, keep working, but there was always that sickening terror and anxiety underlying every one of his days.

What if he lost? Everything else would then be lost with him. That wasn't an option, but the uncertainty constantly haunted him anyway. It wasn't something he could afford to mess up, and yet, he didn't know what he was doing half the time, so sometimes, if he thought about it too much, it almost seemed inevitable that he would. The prophecy had said, only one walked out alive, and he knew he was in over his head, going against one of the most powerful Dark Wizards in history. All the odds seemed to be stacked against him, and even if he won, he didn't know if he would be alive at the end of it for him to grant Malfoy any of his demands.

He could hardly tell Malfoy any of that, though. 

"Anything else?" Harry asked softly.

Malfoy looked taken aback at the question, perhaps expecting resistance, and then he deflated. His gaze darted away. "No."

Harry nodded, and then turned away to move back into his corner. Before he could, he heard Malfoy rasp out coldly, "you better hope Greyback didn't like you crying and begging too much, Potter. He has a hard-on for that sort of thing." He didn't know if Malfoy was trying to rile him up, get a rise out of him, or if he was trying to warn him in his own twisted and taunting way. He waited for the familiar blaze of anger to swallow him whole, but only the flush of embarrassment came.

He moved back into his corner silently, staring at nothing.

The rest of dawn was spent like this, silent and inside their own heads.

***

In the afternoon, they get their first meal, one full cup of water and a bowl of cold soup slid forcefully through a gap at the bottom of the door and into the centre of the room, where Harry could reach it.

Harry only breathed when the footsteps faded away into nothing.

He scooted forward, taking the tray of food and water and pulling it backwards towards himself. He could sense Malfoy's gaze tracking him, but the other boy remained quiet. Harry slid it over within his reach, pushing the tray towards him. He didn't know if Malfoy would need help, and if he would, whether he would accept it from Harry. Asking such a thing seemed to be a recipe for invoking Malfoy's wrath, and he was too tired for it.

Malfoy dragged his limbs over uncoordinatedly, shakily fumbled to grip the tray and slide it towards himself, and then stopped. He darted up a cool glance at Harry, silver eyes dull and boring into him.

"Take your half."

Harry did not feel like eating, however, and Malfoy seemed to need the water more than him, so he shook his head.

"I won't insist," Malfoy muttered carelessly, trembling fingers wrapping around the rim of the cup of water.

It was unsettling and painful to watch the struggle as Malfoy painstakingly tried to lift his head and put his mouth to the cup of water. Harry hesitated, and then moved forward. He slid a hand under Malfoy's cheek and raised it up, taking the cup and tilting it as much as it would go without spilling water, so that his lips could reach it with more ease. Surprisingly, Malfoy didn't fight him despite his initial hostility. 

Harry tore it away after a few seconds, when he started choking and coughing because he drank too fast and too much at once. 

He let Malfoy eat the soup on his own, knowing the only other option was one Malfoy would never allow for, but he felt unsettled watching him, starved and desperate for every spoonful he shakily put to his lips. He dropped much of it in his struggle. Harry looked away when he realized he was staring. And he didn't look when Malfoy ended up puking much of it.

***

Harry couldn't sleep, even though he was tired. He could hear Malfoy's uneven breathing.

He was crying silently, every now and then, a thick sniff would rip out of him, or stilted, pained heaves or unsettled, choked noises that sounded like something between a moan and whine. Every now and then, he hummed a tune to himself, scrapy and wavering and quiet, in an attempt to distract himself, before he would choke up and weep all over again from the pain.

The pain seemed to not let the other boy sleep. He squirmed, and then stopped, his face twisted with tears and discomfort, trapped in a body filled with anguish and deep malaise and no escape at all from it.

Harry remembered being Crucio'd in fourth year, in the graveyard where Voldemort rose, where Cedric Diggory died. It had to have been a few seconds, but time seemed to slow down when such terrible anguish rippled through his body, setting every one of his nerves on fire. All of his muscles had stiffened and contracted from the agony, his joints twisted and stretched painfully.

It had hurt worse than anything he had ever physically felt. He knew pain. He had been beaten enough times by Uncle Vernon and his cousin, Dudley. He had broken bones and had collected bruises and he had crammed himself into a small cupboard with all of them.

The Cruciatus curse, however, seemed to cause the peak of human physical pain.

The few minutes of it, however long it had been, had been enough for him to be cramping and rigid and in pain the next morning. He hadn't quite managed to get out of bed that day, but that had also had a lot to do with the horrible hollow feeling that had pervaded inside of him, like he had just shut down, like every bit of life and feeling had been sucked out of him by a dementor. Cedric Diggory had died right in front of his eyes. He had carried his body back to a mournful father. Voldemort had returned, and the Wizarding World was to repeat the horrendous history that had occurred in his parents' time.

Ron and Hermione had noticed, and so did Neville. Harry had refused to go see Madame Pomfrey, because he could not be bothered.

In the end, it had been Neville who had known just what to do, the reason why he knew everything there was to know about the Cruciatus Curse painfully obvious. He had told them everything about it, and the room had been silent between the four of them after, still at a terrible loss for words about what had happened to Neville's parents.

Neville had pointed to a simple healing potion that could help, and Hermione had brewed it, while Neville had massaged his arms and back to soothe his aching muscles and joints. Ron had sat beside him and tried to distract him by talking about anything and everything.

And in that moment, Harry missed them all so much that it left him sick and aching.

He didn't know if it could help Malfoy, at the extent to which it had been inflicted on him, but it was the only thing he knew.

Harry scooted towards him, chains around his ankles clanking against the floor. Malfoy's pinched and distressed gaze, silver and shining with tears in the shard of moonlight, followed him upon hearing the sound.

"I'm going to try something," Harry mumbled to him as he reached him. "Tell me if you want me to stop."

Malfoy's gaze was pinched, but now also from confusion and wariness. His face, flushed a faint pink from his distress, was still crumpled slightly, but he didn't say anything.

Harry leaned forward on his knees, settled his hands on Malfoy's wrists and carefully straightened his arms out in front of him.

His fingers wrapped around the other boy's forearms, avoiding the clear black ink of serpent and skull, and squeezed gently on the muscles, continuing up his arms and to the joints of his wrists, and down to his hands. They moved up to his elbows, massaged the joint there, and up his biceps, and the back of his neck, where they kneaded and rubbed into the hardened, sore spots there. Malfoy's wet face twisted, one strangled and pained noise choking out of him.

"Sorry. Sorry, it's going to hurt a bit at first," Harry murmured, moving down to squeeze his wrists soothingly. "But it'll help soon. I'm sure it will. If it doesn't, tell me to stop."

He thought about what Ron did, keeping up a constant chatter about everything and nothing and how it helped, getting his mind off of the pain and unease while Neville had kneaded into the knots of his muscles. When Harry's undernourished and weakened body couldn't stay upright anymore without tremendous effort and focus, he laid down next to the other boy and shifted to make himself as comfortable as possible on a stone-cold floor. Malfoy's silver eyes remained fixated on Harry's, and he was quiet, but something had eased slightly in his face, in his eyes.

"Okay?"

Malfoy twitched his shoulders in a feeble, slow shrug. Harry supposed that wasn't a negative answer, so he continued. He eventually ventured down to his upper back.

The sharp cry upon pressing down made Harry jerk his hands back up to the safety of his nape as if he was burnt. "Fuck, sorry. Just arms and hands and neck, then."

At any other point under any other circumstances, Harry would laugh and find it absolutely absurd, what he was doing. Giving Draco Malfoy massages like it was the most natural thing for the two of them, for the history they had. It was not very funny right now, in the whole context of things.

"In fourth year," Harry said, moving his hands back up to the nape of his neck and rubbing into the tense spots again, occasionally switching to the sides of his neck, moving up and down his arms and hands in a constant rhythm and pattern. His own hands and arms had already begun to hurt, but he didn't stop. "When the portkey took me and Cedric to the graveyard…" Harry stopped suddenly, not certain if he wanted to speak of it, of the terrible memory, to feel all the terrible feelings that came with it. He plowed through anyway. "You-Know-Who...he used it on me. The Cruciatus Curse. It must have been a few seconds, or a few minutes, but… it was enough to hurt like hell the next day. My friends did this for me, and it—it helped. It's not the same thing, but maybe, I thought..."

For as long as Harry could, he talked, even if with much struggle in searching for content. He and Malfoy hardly had any common interests outside of Quidditch, nor the level of comfort needed to make words flow easily, and he imagined Malfoy might be finding it all very stupid and mundane.

And then Harry thought that maybe he didn't, that maybe he just needed someone, anyone, to talk to him because it had been very quiet here for too long, that maybe he just needed to hear a voice that didn't promise harm and fear.

So he intended to keep talking, just until the silver-eyed boy had fallen asleep. 

But it was Harry who began to fall asleep very soon, fatigue and weakness catching up to him. His own voice faded into silence in his ears, his aching hands and burning arms stilling whenever he was about to drift away, but the fear of what he may see in his dreams and the fact that Malfoy was still wide awake, his face slackened as he observed him quietly in the dark beneath still wet lashes stuck together, kept jolting him back into consciousness, his throbbing hands resuming their kneading motions each time. He was hoping it might soothe the other boy just enough to sleep, perhaps into a light doze at the very least.

His drooping eyes opened again as he struggled to keep himself awake, finding Malfoy's grey eyes still staring back at him in the moonlight. They did not look cold or angry in the least.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter will also have references to rape and psychological torture

The next time Greyback came back, he walked past Draco and over to Potter instead.

Potter was in the corner again, and he was tracking Greyback from the upper corners of his eyes as the werewolf moved towards him, wary and cold. Draco could not tell if he was just good at concealing his fear, or if he was truly not as afraid as he should be, but it was just one of the many things he envied the other boy for.

Greyback lowered to one knee in front of Potter with a grunt, an elbow hanging off of it.

"You know," Greyback said, and Draco could not see it, but he could hear the bared canines of his grin in his voice. "I think I might take you up on your word the last time. Leave the other one alone for today. That was what you wanted, did you not, little Saviour?" 

And then, just like that, Potter's fearlessness crumbled into dust.

His face fell from the cold expression, the quiver of terror in his bright green eyes clear as they grew wider. His chest stuttered, his forehead furrowing into a frown, as if he didn't quite understand even when he clearly did.

"Surely the Dark Lord will not begrudge me for having you once? Perhaps he doesn't even have to know," Greyback muttered, thoughtfully. He lifted his hand and gripped Potter's chin in a bruising grip, turning his face this way and that. Potter tried to thrash his head off from his hands, his brows drawn together deeply in his horror and fear, and Draco felt his own skin crawl at the sight of it, feeling it as if he had felt it on his own skin again. Potter's chest was jouncing up and down rapidly. "Not quite as delicate as I would prefer, but I suppose you will do. "

This was where Draco should look away, once he could force himself to, and think despite his shame and self-reproach, _ better him than me or my family,_ because that was just what he did when other people got hurt right before his eyes, Crucio'd and made to scream and then killed. This was where he stayed frozen and silent, where he listened to the screams and cries for help and did nothing, men and women and children, Muggles and muggleborns. Harry Potter.

He could not look away.

He could not think, _ better him than me,_ because that was when it had never been him, and now it had been, and now he knew. 

Draco could tell himself that he was selfish and a coward and a terrible person, who did terrible things and let terrible things happen, and he could leave it at that the way he always had, because that was the kind of person he was. He could look away. He could do nothing.

Draco was in pain. He was always in pain. He didn't want to be in pain. He didn't want to be in even more pain, even if it was only going to be for one day. Was that so bad? It wouldn't hurt Potter the way it would hurt him after being cursed by the Cruciatus spell over and over and over. Was that_ so fucking bad? _If it was someone else today? Just for today?

He saw that terror on Potter's face, the same terror he had had on his own every time it had happened to him, and everything in him whispered, _ y_e_s_, _ it was, because he doesn't deserve it. Not like you do. _

But he didn't want anyone to ever see him like that ever again. 

He certainly did not want _Potter_ to see him like that ever again. Potter who was his former school foe, who had hated him for years, who could one day say one wrong word and shatter him to pieces, who knew he could use it against him.

Potter, who Draco knew would never do that, because that was the kind of person he was.

Potter, who got angry for him when they hurt him and offered to let himself be hurt instead of Draco. Potter, who covered him in his jacket and laid down next to him in the middle of the night to ease the aches in his muscle and joints, so tired he could barely talk, and then kept talking softly to him anyway, kept falling asleep and kept waking himself up so that he could soothe Draco to sleep first. Potter, who was good to him even though he had no reason to be, even though Draco had given him every reason not to be. Maybe Draco had saved his life, but Draco had done it for himself, for his parents, not for Potter.

The green-eyed had silent tears glistening down his cheeks, and he was shaking and shrunken back as far as he could, trying to shove the heavy man off of him with every bit of strength to no avail, because his body was weak and starved and exhausted. Greyback was dragging his teeth down his neck, leaning into him. Draco felt the weight of the scars on his own neck.

He had never seen Potter cry for himself.

Potter who had a future ahead of him where Draco had only darkness, who was supposed to walk out of here alive and unscathed, unhurt, because nothing else would be fair. Potter, who would have a whole world to save after they hurt him in this irrevocable way, perhaps a whole life to be haunted by this, when Draco had nothing but a few more weeks until he died here in this cell, alone and crippled, already ruined in every possible way.

Why should they get to ruin Potter too, then?

Draco was a terrible person, but perhaps even he could not be so terrible as to let something like this happen to someone like Potter.

Draco swallowed, choked by agony and by terror, for himself, for Potter. Every fibre in his being resisted, and his voice just wouldn't come out. It just wouldn't. His face crumpled, panic and desperation and the thought of the pain he could see coming. He couldn't do it, maybe. He couldn't. Perhaps it was too hard to make an old dog learn new tricks. Perhaps he never could be anything more than a selfish coward.

He saw Potter's face and remembered the drooping green eyes keeping themselves open so that they would see Draco's close first, and he knew this would be one of the worst things he would remember on the day he died.

"We could turn the game around," Greyback muttered, hands on Potter's narrow hips. "Tell me I should go play with him, and I'll stop."

Draco's face crumpled when Potter looked his way, and quivering, damp green met quivering, damp silver. Potter looked at him, just looked at him for the longest moment, in a way that made Draco's heart wrench in his chest for an inexplicable reason. 

Draco thought he would do it, maybe, when it was this close to happening, because surely no one was that selfless, even Potter. Part of him was terrified that he would do it, and part of him thought that perhaps it would ease his internal conflict so much more, and if Harry Potter could be a selfish coward, then Draco could be one too.

Potter's green eyes averted, and he did not say a word.

Draco did not think he would speak either, did not think he could be anything more than he was. He tried to get his voice out, didn't know what he was going to say, how he was going to get him away from Potter, take the equal measures of horrible terror and resignation off of Potter's face, didn't know if he was going to say anything at all—

And then Potter sobbed, and something in Draco's chest _ lurched._

"Greyback!" he called out, feeble but clear in the small room, his voice jolted out of his throat in a near-sob of his own. He was crying, heaves building in his chest up to his clogged throat, pressure behind his eyes and his nose stinging, but no tears came from the shortage of water in his body. 

Greyback stopped, what Draco could see of his back stilling.

"Don't—don't you want me anymore?"

Greyback turned, his hairy eyebrows arched curiously. Draco tried to smile, shaky and terribly unconvincing. He could feel his own face, his own crumpled chin trying to maintain the smile, his wide and scared eyes.

"I'll—I'll do anything you want me to."

Greyback narrowed his eyes, cocking his head. His gaze flicked to Potter, who was staring at Draco with eyebrows drawn in anxiety and confusion, shaking his head imperceptibly, and it was unclear whether it was to Draco or to nothing in particular. Greyback looked back to him, something inquisitive and incredulous in the squint of his eyes. Perhaps he understood what Draco was doing and why, perhaps he did not entirely, or perhaps he did not at all, unable to believe that someone such as Draco would be trying to keep Harry Potter safe for any reason whatsoever.

In the end, he seemed not to care about any of it besides how it could serve him. Whether or not he believed Draco wanted him anywhere near himself was unclear, but it did not matter that Draco must look nearly in tears.

"Anything I want?"

Draco nodded, slightly. He did not look at Potter again, afraid of what he might see there, and afraid that any sort of indication to Greyback that he was doing this for Potter's safety would make it all go wrong more than it already was about to.

Greyback grinned and shrugged. "I won't say no to that."

It hurt much, much worse this time around, but it would be Greyback's vile words and names, and the sickening demands that he complied to, Potter's angry, tearful screams and pleas in the back of it all, that might really keep him awake that night.

***

When it was over, and Greyback was gone, and Draco was finally, _ finally _left alone to his agony and the horrible grunts of Greyback's taunts still ringing in his mind, he pushed himself to his side with all that he had, heaved and retched even though he knew nothing would come out, and then shook and shook and shook, crying silently as he did.

And then Potter was right there next to Draco, and suddenly he wasn't alone. The weight and warmth of Potter's jacket was back over his lower body. Draco felt the faint brush of his hands against his hip and calf when Potter adjusted it over him.

"I'm disgusting," Draco croaked out in a quiet sob, because Greyback's names and words would not let him go, nor would the thought that this time, he chose it. He asked for it. He did everything Greyback made him do of his own accord.

Potter laid down beside him, and his hands were in Draco's hair, running through it so gently that it didn't hurt as much when he pushed through the knots of his tousled, unkempt locks and broke them, and he shook his head and whispered, "No you're not." His face was twisted with sorrow and was wet too, lashes glistening and stuck together by water. 

He had cried for Draco. Potter. Potter had cried for Draco. Draco would never have believed anyone could cry for him except his parents.

Potter kept stroking his warmer fingers through his hair, and it felt good after everything, after such a long time of having no tenderness such as this, and it soothed something tight and cracked and hurting inside of him. The weight of the filth underneath his skin and over it did not feel as heavy and close, possibly comforted by the thought that someone as pure and clean as Potter could still touch someone as impure and dirty as him without being repulsed, and the agony in his body seemed just a bit subdued and out of focus.

"Fuck, sorry," Potter said, shaking his head, when he must have noticed Draco's eyes on him. His fingers had stopped running through his locks, and he was trying to untangle it out carefully, but as quickly as possible. He sniffed. "I don't know what I'm doing. I don't… I don't know what to do."

"Don't stop," Draco said, near breath of a whisper, his voice so hushed he wasn't certain if Potter had even heard him. He must have, because the fingers then slowly started moving through his hair again, scraping nails softly against his scalp in a way that felt almost heavenly.

"Okay. I won't," Potter said, just as quietly back.

"I didn't… mean it," Draco mumbled, quiet and hoarse and breathless from the effort and the air it took, air that he didn't feel like he had all of. "I was just embarrassed—and hurt. I thought I-I would feel better—if you were too." He hadn't felt better this time, because he knew now. He had had a lot of time to do nothing but think, and one of the many things he had realized was this: Potter had not deserved it. He had not deserved any of the animosity and hatred Draco had had towards him, once. His throat flexed, trying to push down the burning in his throat. "I didn't want you to—see me like that."

Potter didn't say anything after that, just kept stroking his fingers through his hair. Draco felt the pull of slumber, the burning cramps of his muscles and joints and lower body pulling him back, but he tried to focus on Potter's hands instead. He was about to fall, when Potter's voice shook away the light doze.

"Why'd you do it?" Potter asked in a hushed voice. For a moment in his haze of near-slumber, Draco couldn't process the question.

"You're...too important," Draco said, when he did. "I am not."

It was only an objective truth, a fact, and it didn't hurt to admit his mediocrity out loud as much as he thought it would, maybe because he had already accepted his very mediocre fate. The only thing Draco really wanted now in this pathetic excuse for a life was freedom, safety and a good life for his parents.

Potter frowned, shaking his head. "That's not true."

He wasn't sure how he could imply that someone like Draco could be just as important as someone like Potter.

"Everything I have—have ever done wrong… it has led me here," Draco whispered, words that he perhaps never would have said with such honesty if he were in a better state of mind.

Everything he had ever done wrong, from antagonizing Potter and his friends, being a racist and a bully, to becoming a Death-Eater to killing Professor Dumbledore to being a coward, it had led him here. It seemed to be the universe's way of punishing him. He had been nothing but terrible, so it was only fair that terrible things happened to him. He had refused to believe it when the thought first threaded through his mind, and then eventually it festered and did not leave him. It made sense, after all.

If he had not antagonized Potter and his friends, he would have had the face to take aid from them. Perhaps he would not become a Death-Eater, then, and none of this would have happened.

If he had not become a Death-Eater, he would not have been tasked to kill Professor Dumbledore and then failed, and then none of this would have happened.

If he hadn't killed Professor Dumbledore, perhaps if he had sought his help much sooner, he could have kept Draco and his family safe the way he had promised on that Astronomy Tower.

If he had been a bit braver, like Potter and his friends were, perhaps he would have been able to do much more. Perhaps he would have been able to find a way to get himself and his family to safety, if he hadn't been so terrified to act, to step out of line and risk invoking the Dark Lord's wrath on himself. Perhaps if he had known what lay ahead of him anyway, he would have.

Perhaps if he had been anyone better than Draco Malfoy, anything better than what he was, done anything better than what he did, none of this would have happened.

And now here he was.

"I deserve it." Draco could not cry anymore no matter how it hurt to say this, his body having had enough of weeping for today. He only sounded factual, only sounded weary and resigned. 

Potter shook his head, disbelief and mourn drawing his face into a doleful frown. "Don't say stuff like that. Merlin, Malfoy, you're only young. You didn't want to. Nobody deserves this."

Draco didn't want to talk anymore, so he closed his eyes. He just wanted to sleep now and forget he existed. He was tired, and he hoped he would be able to sleep right now, hopefully to Potter's voice and hands.

"I'm here," Potter said then, softly. He must have shifted closer, because his breaths were warm on Draco's face. "I'll be here until you're asleep, okay?"

And despite all the horrible things that had happened today, Draco felt soothed and safe for the first time in a very long time. 

Eventually, he did fall asleep to Potter's voice and hands.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for reference to past torture and implied rape.

Draco woke up the next day to Potter's face much closer to his own, raven-black hair wild and falling across his cheek. His arm was over him, sprawled over his waist and coming to brush over his lower back in a loose, half-grip.

It was a strange realization that he didn't mind it in the least, and that he felt no compulsion to wake Potter so that he could remove his arm. So he didn't.

Instead Draco silently watched him, feeling creepy and odd and yet, unable to tear his gaze away. There were troubled lines on Potter's face even when he was deep in slumber. He had the inexplicable urge to smooth it over. He watched the way the shard of golden sunlight framed his lower face, over the widening of the bridge of his nose and the pink of his mouth and his chin, his glasses askew on his face.

He was breathtaking.

He had always been to Draco, for some reason, even if it was something he could only begrudgingly admit in the privacy of his own mind or a thought he wholly ignored he had ever had. But he was.

Draco finally looked away, when it started feeling very odd to stare at him as if he would a lover. The thought startled him for a moment, somewhat bewildered, but the thought of being with Potter was not an unwelcome idea to him. If he had allowed himself to look beneath his jealousy and animosity, and admit to himself the way he had felt at the robe shop upon seeing him and on the train before he was rejected, perhaps it hadn't entirely been even before.

Draco snorted softly to himself. As if. As far as he knew, Potter had only ever dated girls, and the thought of anyone wanting to be with Draco in such a way anymore was absurd and idiotic at best. That was assuming he was even going to get out of here and get to live some semi-semblance of a life, and that didn't seem too plausible either way. 

The thought of _ Potter _wanting anything to do with Draco in such a way was downright laughable and out of the question.

He was only lonely, he supposed. That was why he was thinking about such impossible things, things he hadn't thought about in a very long time. Nobody had touched him or taken care of him or comforted him or spoken to him the way Potter did for a very long time either. He had been alone in this dark and quiet cell for however much time he had been here, and it felt a _ long _time, even though he suspected that it hadn't been as long as it had felt.

But nonetheless, it was simply unthinkable. Potter would never develop such feelings for someone like him. He was a Death-Eater, and even without that fact, a rather despicable person. On top of that, he would be too much of a burden as a lover, if he even made it out, and Draco did not want that. Potter's kindness towards him didn't mean anything beyond the other boy generally being a kind person, and Draco was pathetically willing to take all the scraps he would give him, just until somebody finally came for Potter and took him away ftom here, preferably much sooner than the Dark Lord restoring to health or finding out somehow.

Even as the less selfish and more logical parts of Draco didn't want Potter here, when he could be out there saving the world like he was meant to, the people Draco loved more than anything a part of it, when he could just be out there, much safer and healthier and happier than here at least, the thought of being left all alone again churned his gut and made his heart sick.

Eventually he would, once again, have to be here without the green-eyed boy's soft and stilted and awkward rambling, and his hands soothing him by rushing through his hair or easing the deep aches in his arms and hands and neck, not stopping until he fell asleep, and his body close to his own at night. Now that he had had these things, he didn't know how he would let go.

The idea made him want to die sooner, before he would have to face that darkness and silence on his own again, before he would have to face having no one to take care of him after each time Rowle and Greyback were done with him once more.

Draco tried to place his focus on other thoughts, ones that didn't make him feel so mournful and lonely and pathetic.

He missed his family, with an ache so deep and harsh in his chest that it left him sick. He longed for his mother and his father. Draco wished he could see them again, even if it would only be once, just once, before he had to go.

He missed his mother's cheek kisses, and her brushing back his hair. She always made his hair with her own hands on the day he left for Hogwarts Express. He missed her teasing and her caring and loving, and her listening, and how she would have done anything so he wouldn't get hurt.

It was also the thing that had scared him that day, before they brought him here. She had begged to the Dark Lord to let her take his place, and Draco knew, no matter what else happened, that could not. For all his cowardice and selfishness, he knew he would have done anything not to let that happen. In the end, they didn't listen, for it was, in their words, his disloyalty and disobedience and utter uselessness that had brought him here to this cell.

Once, he had blamed his father for placing him in such a situation. In his anger and helplessness, he had wanted to fault someone that wasn't himself, and his father was the simplest and easiest, since he had passed on the legacy after all.

And then it all stopped mattering when they told him he was dead. 

His father was dead, and all that anger had drained right out of him, and he had been left hollow. When it finally sunk in, he was left with nothing but heavy, bone-deep grief and a nauseatingly desperate need for him as well as his mother.

They had died because of Draco.

That realization was the start of a downhill slide into the endless pit of his self-loathing as well as self-awareness.

Now Draco knew they were alive. They were alive and well, and that meant everything.

After his father's pseudo-death, there was one moment that he had revisited constantly in his mind, for the memory of his embrace as well as the light it had shone on his father's actual state of mind.

On the day of the ceremony of Draco receiving the curse of the Dark Mark, he had been rather proud of being chosen by Lord Voldemort. That pride had had more to do with his father being proud of him as well than anything, because that had been a constant strive for Draco. His father did not feel proud of him very easily, but he had looked proud then. He hadn't noticed how stiff his smile had been, nor his body.

He hadn't known that it was only pretense.

His father had come into his room, after, had sat beside him and just looked at him for some time in silence, an unfathomable expression on his face. Draco had hoped he would tell him how proud he was.

His father had leaned forward and held him instead. It was rather odd and uncharacteristic, but after that had died down, Draco had held him back and pushed his chin into the shoulder of his suit with a smile.

It wasn't pride or joy that had compelled his father to embrace him, as he soon learned. His father had been trembling, and in that moment, Draco grew uncertain and afraid. His father withdrew then, pushing him back with hands on his shoulders, and said, "Do not displease the Dark Lord, no matter what. Do you understand? Not for anyone. It will bear terrible consequences for you and your parents."

It was in this cell that Draco would truly realize that his father had only ever wanted all of them to be safe and away from the Dark Lord, without threat to their lives.

Potter's arm twitched on his waist, his head shifting. His hips stirred, legs brushing up against Draco's. His green eyes slowly blinked open, groggy and slow, falling onto Draco's own. 

Draco didn't know if he imagined the near-smile, the subtle twitch of the corners of his lips. He was fairly certainly he had.

But then Potter jolted sharply, his eyes widening. He scrambled up into a sitting position as quickly as he could. He looked terribly upset. "Oh, bloody hell!"

Draco blinked, feeling the flush of mortification in his own chest, for being seen awake and not waking Potter to make him move away. Well, if he had known this was how much it would upset Potter to be that close to him, he would have done it.

But it wasn't _ his _ fault, was it? Draco had stayed right where he was last night. It was Potter who must have burrowed closer to him at some point in his slumber, so it was Potter's fault. He didn't do anything—

"Did I—" Potter was looking down at him closely, his face still furrowed in distress. He ran a hand through the mess of his raven hair, pushing it back. "Fuck, did I hurt you?"

Oh.

It was then that Draco was able to read the worry on his face.

Potter must have read his surprised silence as confirmation, because now he looked guilty and ashamed. His eyes averted away, his lips twisting in remorse.

"No," Draco said, quickly. "You— you didn't."

Potter glanced at him, an eyebrow arched at the delayed response, as if uncertain if that was only said to appease him. He looked at him closely again for another moment, and then, at whatever he must have found, his face sagged with relief.

Draco thought he would retreat into his corner the way he usually did in the morning. Instead, Potter shifted on his outstretched arms behind him against the floor, sliding downward to lie beside him again on his back. 

His chest panged with a strange, hollow sort of feeling, melding with a dull ache of longing, and he couldn't stop thinking about Potter's arm around his waist.

  
  
  
***

"How long will it be?" Harry asked aloud, finally voicing the question he had been turning over in his head. His gaze hadn't budged from the ceiling. "Until he's restored?" _ Until he comes and kills me? _

They had both been silent since they'd awaken.

"Two weeks, give or take," Malfoy answered.

"That doesn't sound very long."

"Perhaps it will be long enough. Can't afford to believe otherwise, Potter."

Harry wished he could believe it, but the uncertainty was too clear. Two weeks was hardly enough time, and anyone who would be looking for him, _ if _ they were looking for him instead of making the natural presumption that he was dead, would take too much time just working out where to _ start _ looking.

"It's times like these that I wish I knew how to do wandless magic," Harry muttered, absentmindedly. It was something they were to learn next year. Hermione, however, had already learned the theory and how to cast some basic spells in fifth year. Harry wished he had learned them with her, and he certainly would have had the interest, but he had already been swamped in too many things, like homework, Umbridge and her detentions, teaching DADA classes, and then after, Sirius's death.

"I know the theory." Malfoy said, and Harry stilled.

Bloody hell. Of course he would. The boy was only second to Hermione in academics, after all.

"Tell me."

"It's not easy, Potter… it does require much control and focus that you'll have to master, even for something very simple. That's where you usually start. It rather takes time."

"I've got nothing but time here, Malfoy, in case you haven't noticed."

Malfoy arched an eyebrow drily. "You only have two weeks. At _ most_."

"You know what I mean. Tell me the theory."

"I can't see how you'll do it without proper guidance." Malfoy pressed his lips together. "Alright then."

Wandless magic was all about using one's core, where all their power resided within them. The wand was merely used to summon, control and focus that power for a specific purpose with ease. Such power was rather difficult to control with only one's own body, which entailed bringing it to the surface, to balance the intensity and the amount summoned, to shape it for a particular use or spell etc. This explained the out of control feelings Harry had had when he used to unknowingly use magic around his relatives, before he had found out he was a wizard.

The method used best was to imagine the core, search for it and feel it within oneself, and when felt, to draw out the magic that was coiled up there and feel it in your hands, where they can be focused and controlled best. The trick was to summon the right amount required for whatever spell cast. Too much magic for something that required much less could go make much else go wrong, or just not work at all, and too little would not work either.

"Did you ever try it?"

"At first. Didn't work. I only knew the theory, and not much else, and it's hard to focus, especially when you're in pain. I only wanted light, because I was afraid of the dark. I knew I couldn't run. They would have caught me anyway. I stopped, when I was hurt too much, because I couldn't do anything."

"Are you still afraid?" Harry asked softly.

Malfoy looked at him in a flick of his silver eyes. He gave a feeble shrug, answering just as softly, "Not as much anymore."

***

"They… they don't particularly try to hurt me. Why is that?" 

"Shouldn't you be grateful?"

"I don't want them to hurt you either." Harry looked at the other boy for a moment, whose face softened imperceptibly. He shrugged. "I just thought...wouldn't they want to hurt me more? Don't they hate me more?"

"The Dark Lord hates you."

Harry raised an eyebrow, unsure what was new about that. "I gathered, from the six years that he'd spent plotting to kill me. He wasn't even alive in two of them."

"I mean…" Malfoy sighed. "He _ really _ hates you. It's rather terrifying how much he does. I imagine he would want every bit of pain inflicted on you to be at his own hand. Unless it is to capture you, he would feel that anyone else doing that work for him has robbed him of his right. Even if by a bit. For now, Potter, that's good for you. They can't hurt you in any way that would leave visible signs."

Harry couldn't think of what to say to that. It was certainly disturbing.

"That's...dark."

Malfoy's brows drew together in exasperated confusion. "That's all you have to say?"

"What else am I supposed to say?"

Malfoy lifted an eyebrow. "I don't know. Perhaps something along the lines of, 'Oh Merlin, I sure hope I can be out of here before he gets his hands on me and tortures me to death."

Harry quirked an amused eyebrow. It wasn't supposed to be funny, but Malfoy's sarcastic wording was rather ridiculous.

"Oh. Um. Okay, then." Harry shrugged. "Oh Merlin, I sure hope I can be out of here before he gets his hands on me and tortures me to death?"

Malfoy wasn't smiling. "This isn't a joke."

Harry's amused smile faded, suddenly feeling insensitive. Sometimes it helped him to see dark and terrible things in a lighter manner. But this hadn't just been about him. It couldn't ever be just about him anymore. Malfoy had lived with Voldemort in his home and had witnessed firsthand what exactly torture at his hand meant. And Harry knew himself better than anyone that nothing about Voldemort was to be taken lightly. "No, it's not. You're right. I'm sorry."

Silence reigned over once more.

Two weeks. That was all he had, and then Merlin knew what was to happen to him, how much anguish he was to be in before he died. The thought churned his gut with nausea and fear.

What would happen then, if he did die?

Would the Wizarding World be in ruins forever, or would they choose another Saviour? Would he or she manage to defeat the Dark Lord?

What of his friends, all the people he loved, people who had been associated with him? If Voldemort hated him so much, he would surely go after all those he cared for and rid the world of every trace of him and his loved ones.

And in the end, that was what terrified him the most, his loved ones dying, getting hurt. He would die a thousand times himself if it meant he could avoid that.

With this war coming, sometimes Harry couldn't imagine how he would manage it, keeping them all safe and alive and with him, especially the people who were closely involved with him. Ron and Hermione. 

Even now, he had no idea what had become of them.

"I'm really scared." The quiet admission left him before he could think about whether he wanted to admit such vulnerability to Malfoy or not.

"I imagine you are."

The careful words seemed to open something in him, and the words tumbled out like they had grown too heavy to keep inside. "I'm scared of people dying because of me. People I love. This whole war, it's because of me-"

"This whole war is because the Dark Lord wants a world clear of muggles and muggleborns," Malfoy said, calmly. "You are the only thing standing between him and that world."

"The people I care are in danger though, because he wants to kill me, and he'll kill them to get to me, and there were—" Harry stopped, the harsh pang of pain, of all the empty holes in his life where those he loved and lost were all supposed to fit, striking him in the chest. "there were so many people that I couldn't save. And if I can't save the ones I still have-"

"You can't save everyone, Potter," Malfoy said. "even if you're the Saviour. Sometimes there is nothing you can do."

"I can't lose them," Harry mumbled, trying not to lose composure. He didn't know why he was telling all of this to Malfoy, but he was. Maybe it was because he was tired and hungry and thirsty and cold and overwhelmed and afraid and he wasn't in his right mind, or maybe it was because there was something between them that couldn't be named or explained now, after everything, and it made it easier to open up to the other boy. "I can't lose any more."

There were no further words, but there was a cold tangle of two trembling fingers brushing tentatively against his own on the floor.

***

Harry had fallen asleep trying to cast the Lumos spell wandlessly, and had then awoken in the middle of the night to sounds and vibrations, strangled cries and sobs and trembling hands against the side of his arm drawing him out of slumber.

The thought threading into his mind, that Malfoy was in pain, hurting, or afraid sobered him up rather instantly. Harry's eyes fully opened, and he found that Malfoy was still asleep, but his face was crumpled in distress by whatever he was dreaming of.

He touched the other boy's cold hands, kneading them in his own like he was trying to ease the pain in his joints again, even as this time, it was of a more soothing intent.

"Malfoy. Wake up. Hey." He rubbed his hands up his arms, hoping to ease him into growing awake from his nightmares. "You're dreaming. You're just dreaming."

The words did not seem to reach Malfoy, who continued to cry. Harry's heart was in his throat, a slow, aching throb that urged him to burrow closer, to touch the other boy in attempts to comfort and soothe, to press kisses to the lines on his face in other to smooth—

Harry swallowed, mentally shaking away the odd thought as soon as it came, and it had not been for the first time. It was only an intense need to comfort and take care of the other boy, that was all. Perhaps the desperate emotions were simply being translated wrongly. That would be the last Malfoy would want from him anyway.

"Malfoy," Harry murmured. He ran his hands through Malfoy's snow-blonde hair, streaked with dirt. These were things he knew he could do, things he had already done, things that were okay between them now. The idea should have been much stranger, but it wasn't, not when he remembered them hurting him, remembered him screaming and crying and pleading. Not when he was crying and sobbing right now.

Malfoy jolted awake, glistening silver eyes flying open. He was gasping, shaking, still crying, his gaze darting around frantically as if he was expecting his nightmares to be happening to him right now.

Harry grabbed his cheeks, holding it to face himself and hold his eyes. "Look at me, hey. Nothing's happening to you right now. It's just me and you. You're okay." Malfoy shook and shook and shook, his pained eyes fixated on his own. "Hey. You're okay."

Malfoy let out a strangled sob. "They—they did it to me there—"

Harry rushed a hand through his hair, down the back of his head and the nape of his neck. He didn't understand what Malfoy was saying. He didn't know where _ there _was, but he assumed they hurt him there as well.

"My—" Malfoy's breaths shuddered and he heaved. His face twisted again, painfully tight and pink. "My living room. They did it to me there—the things they do to me here—before this— "He choked down the sobs, trying to regain control of his voice, thick and quiet and breathless as an almost whisper. 

Harry seemed to have frozen, unable to speak or move, only listen. 

"They made my parents watch. They held them back and made them watch, s-so they would know—what would happen to me every day here." He blinked rapidly, wet lashes stuck together, as he tried to keep himself together. Harry listened and ran both his hands through white-blonde locks, ran his palms down the sides of his head, suffocated by the lump in his own throat and the pain and sorrow filling up the small cell. "My mother was—was screaming. My father— H-he cried. He-" His cheeks glistened with tears. His breaths were growing fast and shallow and short.

When Malfoy's face crumpled completely, finally, breaking down as he jolted against the ground with tremors of his shoulders and his sobs, Harry cradled the other boy's jaws in his palms delicately, pressing foreheads and noses together. He didn't know what to do, didn't know what he was doing, just knew that something inside of him was ripping apart and he was desperate to touch him and be close to him and make him feel better, calmer, quieter. Make him feel good.

When words failed him, when nothing but silence came, and left him achingly, painfully desperate to soothe and quiet the crying boy, Harry leaned over and pressed his lips against Draco's, quivering and chaste and feather-light soft, and kissed him. He kissed him again, and again, and again, palms trembling to his jaws, and when he opened his own blurry eyes and blinked his own sorrow away, he saw rounded, watery silver eyes staring back at him, open and red-rimmed, but Draco's faintly flushed face was smooth of lines, and it was not hurt nor mournful.

And Harry thought, _ I shouldn't have done that. _ Draco didn't need this, Harry making things awkward and uncomfortable, because Harry had kissed him when Draco hardly even liked him and it made everything complicated. 

And then Draco tipped his chin up, a clear invitation for another kiss, and Harry's heart startled.

Harry leaned in, again, tentative and careful, his eyes flicking up to lock onto the silver pair watching him, red-rimmed raw and anticipating and inquisitive. Harry kissed him again, meeting his mouth with his own, and Draco kissed him back just as fervently, slow and tender. The fingers cradling Draco's face delicately grew cold with tears, and Harry rubbed his thumb over his cheeks to wipe them away.

When Draco grew breathless from the kisses as well as grief and stopped to breathe, Harry leaned up on his elbows and continued kissing him shamelessly on the corner of his lips, and then cheek and jaw and the side of his throat. He laid back down and pressed kisses to the expanse of Draco's neck until the silver eyes closed back to sleep.

***

  
  


Harry awoke to the orange glow of dawn, throwing faint and thin shards of light across the ground and walls and the face in front of him.

Last night came to him in an intense haze of desperate, high emotions and the light push of Draco's mouth against his own, and soothing him to sleep by kissing the smooth and pale skin of his neck, one hand on the side of it, and being soothed to sleep himself by the rhythm of it all, the whole world narrowed down to nothing but this. 

The other boy seemed to pull at something in his chest, something aching and soft and swollen, making him feel a way he couldn't explain. 

Was it only compassion, after seeing what he had seen happen? Was it just an intense need to comfort and protect, that translated into such strong feelings and urges that seemed to gnaw at his insides? 

Was it some deep and twisted sense of gratitude and guilt and penance?

Was it his own loneliness and terror and emotional pain, that led him to seek out tenderness and contact and companionship in the only companion available at the moment? Some need to distract himself from his own fear and troubles by focusing on the only other person he could at the moment, because there was nothing else to do but dwell on his sorrows and fears other than this? Was it some subconscious understanding that, perhaps, these last days in a cell were all he had, and he could not bear to live them only lonely and afraid?

Was it all of them?

Was it love?

It could not be love, could it? They hardly knew each other.

And now they had seen each other fall apart more than once at their weakest.

They had hated each other, once. They were linked by a terrible past of mistreatment and loathing and anger towards each other.

And now, more than once, were prepared to pay a great price to save each other.

Draco _ had _ paid it to save him, even if Harry knew it hadn't been for him. Not really. But he had.

Harry supposed it hardly mattered, why he felt the way he felt. If this was all they had, if Harry was really to die here, then perhaps they could both use it, some comfort and tenderness.

That was assuming that it wasn't a one-time thing, whatever it was last night. Perhaps Draco would wake up today and remember that he felt no such feelings for Harry, that it had only been a painfully desperate need for comfort after the hurt of such a horrible memory in the form of a nightmare.

Harry could not fathom it, the disgusting cruelty of these men.

Draco stirred beneath his hand, which had been settled on his waist. His face twitched, and then furrowed in discomfort and pain, a soft moan leaving him. Harry burrowed closer to the paler boy, hand brushing against his arm between them, foreheads only a hair away from touching. He kissed his face, hoping to soothe him back to sleep.

It seemed to have the opposite effect instead. Draco's eyebrows twitched up slightly, eyes still closed. His arm shifted slightly against his hand, seemingly closer toward it.

Harry touched the side of his hair, pushing the strands back, and then smoothed his fingers over the lines on his forehead and around his mouth. Perhaps Draco would awaken or fall asleep, but he wanted him to feel comforted and cared for.

Draco opened his eyes half-mast, reflecting golden dawn in the silver of them. He blinked a few times, groggy and sluggish, until he could fully open them.

Harry brushed their noses slightly, a tentative gesture, but a modicum of comfort and tenderness that he hoped wouldn't be rejected. Green locked onto grey, soft and quiet and apprehensive.

Draco had an unfathomable look in his gaze, but it didn't seem like anything negative. He looked slightly puzzled or incredulous, perhaps, brows twitching into a small furrow. He blinked. Harry suddenly felt embarrassed. Maybe Draco didn't even remember last night, and he was making a fool of himself.

Just as he was about to move away, however, Draco murmured, "I had thought I was dreaming."

Draco's grey eyes visibly softened now, with something like quiet awe.

"You weren't," Harry said, softly, relief loosening the knot that had formed in his chest. He shifted his head closer, licking his dry lips. He thought of kissing him again, just because he couldn't help it, but he still didn't entirely know if he could. He raised his hands, slowly, uncertainly, taking Draco's face in his light palms. His voice was a hesitant near-whisper as he asked, "Is this... okay?"

Draco blinked, not responding for a moment, and then he nodded, slowly, almost as if trying not to seem eager.

Harry smiled and kissed him straight on the mouth, noses smushing together. His hands cradled the paler face between them. Draco pushed back with a reciprocated, close-mouthed kiss, and Harry felt a flush of warmth and comfort in his chest, felt the soft throb of his heart in his throat. The world and its troubles fell away from the forefront if his mind for a moment, forgotten, when he focused on the warm pressure of the other boy's mouth, rough and cracked, but settling something unsettled and loosening something tight inside of him, just for a moment.

Draco broke away, breathless and almost heaving for air, his brows drawn together and his mouth twisted with frustration and discomfort at growing short of breaths so quickly.

Harry pressed one more kiss to his slightly parted lower lip, just at the start of his chin, and then to his chin, and then he came back up, scooted close until his nose was pushed into his cheek, and then breathed against him. Eventually, Draco's breathing grew even too.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for implied torture/abuse. Please don't proceed if they are triggering for you.

"Do you think we'll ever make it out?"

"Not we, Potter." 

Potter frowned and shifted his head to look at Draco, his cheek brushing against the cold ground.

"You will," Draco added. "But let's be honest. There isn't much of a chance for me."

Potter's jaw ticked, his dark brows knitted together. He shook his head. The edges of his eyes, brilliant green in the grey and dull of the cellar, seemed to sting a bit red. "Don't say that."

Gryffindors. They really were too emotional and unwilling to look past it to see reality, weren't they?

"I'm getting you out," Potter said as he shifted closer, trying to hold his eyes with his own. He sounded insistent, convicted, too sure. Draco almost could have believed him, if he hadn't already thought this over, if he didn't already know better. "I'm getting out and I'm taking you with me."

Draco eyed him obscurely. He thought of telling him all the reasons why it wouldn't be possible, but Potter didn't look like he'd understand right now. He'd have to swallow that bitter potion eventually, but that time wasn't now, it seemed.

"Hm. And would you really bother?" Draco said, instead. "Trying to drag my body out and around with you?"

"Of course," Potter said, as if it really was that easy. Draco wasn't sure if he'd even thought it through before giving the answer. He couldn't tell if Potter was only in denial, or if he genuinely believed what he was saying. His face, still set in a frown, was very close to Draco's, just a little above him that he had to look down to meet his eyes. "Did you… you didn't _ really _ think I'd…"

He didn't move, or say anything. His gaze flicked down over his face, back up to his green eyes, which were now pinched in devastation at his silence, the furrow in his brows growing doleful and hurt.

Draco sighed. Such a fool he was. But so beautiful. So awfully noble. He could tell him, he really could, but he supposed it wouldn't do to make him even unhappier and despairing than he already was at the moment.

He tipped his head backward, instead, for a kiss.

"I don't think you even like me," he whispered, just as Potter drew his head closer to comply. Potter stilled. "I think you just feel bad for me." 

Potter blinked, his mouth working, bemused. Draco's lips quirked up into a small smirk, Potter's expression growing even more stupefied.

Draco hums faintly. "That's alright." His voice was still just for the two of them, wispy and light, brushing his mouth against Potter's bottom lip. "I'm just about pitiful enough to not give a damn, Potter. You do feel so very good."

Potter's gaze roved down over his face, studiously, settling on where his lips were close to his own.

"Maybe you don't like me either," Potter murmured against his lips, green eyes darting up to him. "And I'm just all you have."

Draco cocked his head. "Maybe."

Potter kissed him, then, pressing his mouth gently, deeply, against his, hands sliding up to his face. Draco wondered if people really kissed people they didn't like the way Potter kissed him.

  
  


***

  
  


The footsteps were still a distant sound when they heard it. Draco's face froze, and then crumpled, a small gasp of a sob torn out of his throat as his hands clenched tightly into Harry's shirt. Harry's heart was pounding, his own fear a lump in his throat. By now, he had learned that they only showed up at this time of night for one reason.

"It's okay," Harry whispered. He stroked his hair, his face, featherlight hands running over and over. "it's okay. I won't let them hurt you."

Draco's eyes widened. He shook his head, frantic. "No. No, you have to go. You have to—"

"I'm not leaving. I'm not letting them get to you, it's okay—"

"Potter. Potter, please," he choked out, his voice trembling, hands weakly pushing at his chest. His wide eyes were constantly darting over to the direction of the door, the footsteps growing closer.

"They won't hurt me," Harry said, gripping the waist of his shirt a bit tighter, tugging at him just so. "I can _ use _ that—I'll make sure that they don't—"

"They can't see us like this." The thought of it seemed to terrify Draco immensely, and Harry stopped for a moment. Was there something that he was not seeing? "Harry, please." This was the first time he'd ever used his name, Harry realized vaguely. He was pushing at him with what little strength he had, and it was barely anything. "Don't make it worse. Please, just go, for Merlin's sake." Harry didn't budge, staring at him, his heart pounding painfully fast and hard in his sternum, deafening in his ears. Draco pushed at him harder, and it seemed to hurt him this time when he did, his face contorting pink. The footsteps were slowing to a stop outside the door. "just _ go._"

So Harry did, his chest jouncing and falling with his rapid heartbeats as he sat up and scrambled back into the corner, everything shrivelling up inside of him. He set his jaw, eyes fixated on the door as it made a heavy, screeching sound, opening.

  
  


***

  
  


There was so much agony, rippling violently across his nerves and exploding in his head. Somebody kept screaming and Draco knew it was himself, but he felt out of himself, like he was watching it all happen to somebody else, but feeling it all along the way.

And then it stopped. His body was slumping down bonelessly on the ground, his breaths gasping and harsh, in and out of his burning lungs and throat. His body was burning, nerves frayed and raw. His head was spinning, his vision blackening with spots.

And then there was another scream, and it wasn't his own.

And if it wasn't his own—

If it wasn't his own, then it was—

"Rowle, what the bloody _hell_ are you doing?!" Greyback was yelling, something rustling and stilted. There were hasty steps on the ground vibrating against his head, growing further from him. "Rowle! ROWLE! STOP IT!"

"Insolent little bastard!" Rowle gritted out, furious. He was furious when he came in too, rigid and tense. The scream kept on going, gasps in between like it was trying to be silenced and held down. "He _ dared _ lay his filthy hand on me—"

Draco's heart was shrivelling up. _No_. No no no no, not Harry. They weren't supposed to hurt Harry. That was the deal, that was what Draco was supposed to make sure of— "Stop…" he croaked, through his shallow and slow breaths, through a strangled half-wheeze. "Please, stop." They did not hear him.

"We are _ not _ to hurt the Potter boy," Greyback hissed. "He is only for the Dark Lord to hurt, and should he find out, he will have you under the Cruciatus Curse, _ again,_ for that, or even worse." The screaming stopped abruptly. "Lower your wand. Now."

There was silence. The harsh and angry panting breaths over shallow, weak breaths were the only sounds filling the small cell.

There were footsteps, heavy, pounding, fast, whirring past him over his head. He flinched violently. There were another pair of footsteps, calmer, slower, heavier. Draco stopped breathing, a violent jolt of nausea pooling in his gut. They only passed over his head as well, and then the door was hauled shut with a loud thunk.

Draco must have passed out after, and when he awoke, it was still dark. There was no solidity of a body around him.

He turned over to his side, painstakingly slow and with much struggle. He could see Harry now, in the dark of the cell, sprawled on his side and curled over. "Harry," he whispered, chin quivering. His face twisted, chest hurting and tight, when there was no response. "Harry." There was still no response. He wished to Merlin he could get to him, could reach him, but he couldn't. He sucked in a sharp, trembling breath.

Harry stirred into wakefulness when the beginnings of the dawn began to cast a faint orange glow into the cellar. He coughed, a pained sound emanating from him. He struggled up onto his elbows, onto his knees, and then moved over to Draco painstakingly until he was beside him. He dropped down on his side, elbow knocking against the ground. Draco squirmed, frantic, arms dragging over to catch the chest of his shirt, a choked sound escaping him. 

Harry's breaths were shallow and light against his hair, arms coming up on his waist. His eyes were slipping shut again. Draco grappled his fingers over his biceps and tried to knead them into his flesh, hoping it would soothe him the way it did him, but he was too feeble and the contractions of the muscles in his arms sent pain jolting down his body, radiating down his shoulders and back. He winced, clenched his teeth, and tried to keep doing it.

Harry gripped both his hands with one of his and moved them away. He placed the tangle of their hands against his chest, the other arm around him, and kissed his forehead, and then Draco was burying his crumpled face into his chest, pressing his lips together quickly to quiet himself.

"I'm ok," Harry said, tentative, like it was an uncertain attempt to figure out his reason for being upset. 

Draco pushed his mouth to his collarbone, and Harry dropped his hand into his scalp, pulling his hair back. There was silence, then, for a very long time. He was exhausted, but the pain wouldn't let him sleep. The sound of Harry's breaths were unsteady and heavy over him, even though his eyes were closed.

"Harry," Draco mumbled. Harry shifted his head slightly as he opened his eyes, turning his head to look down at him. "Harry, you can't do that again."

Harry didn't say anything for a moment. He just brushed a hand over his head, soothing and warm.

"I'm tired of not… not being able to do anything."

"I know," Draco said. "But you can't keep trying to save me."

If Harry kept doing this, if he kept doing things that made Rowle or even Greyback angry, if they hurt him again and again and again, then it will only make it harder for Harry to make his escape from here. He needed to be at his best, physically and mentally, as much as possible.

"Why?"

_ I can't stand it_. _ Them hurting you. _

"What do you think will happen," Draco asked. "If they find out about us?"

Harry blinked, a slow, hesitant realization dawning in his widening green eyes.

"They'll use me to hurt you," Draco said, circling his fingers over his chest, something to lighten the blow of his next words. "They'll hurt me even worse. Right now, they think you're just being the hero. But the moment they understand that you feel anything more for me… I'm dead."

Harry's jaw clenched, his eyes blazing red, arm tightening around him and tugging him closer. Draco winced and tried to ignore the ache it left behind.

"They won't even make it quick," Draco said, twisting the keel in further, because any chance of leaving it loose meant Harry being stupid and noble and getting hurt, ruining all chances of his freedom. He looked like the thought of Draco dying physically hurt him. "They'll make sure I die of pain and nothing else."

"What am I supposed to do then?" Harry whispered, his lips quivering. He looked helpless, broken.

"Nothing," Draco said, simply. "You do nothing. It's our only way out."

  
  


***

  
  


"Knut for your thoughts?" Harry asked, shifting his head to finally look at him, after a morning of silence and being lost in their own heads, Harry occasionally trying to wandlessly cast a _ Lumos _ before he grew drained and unable to focus.

"You first."

Harry twisted his lips. His face was always so close to his. Draco was almost always tempted to ask for a kiss. "Just... my friends. I'm wondering where they are, if they're all safe." He breathed slowly, deeply. "I wonder if they'll ever find us."

"They're annoyingly stubborn, aren't they? They won't give up until they do. Not on you."

Harry brushed a hand over his hair. "I know. What are you thinking about?"

"My parents," Draco said, softly. 

"You'll see them again," Harry said, kissed his forehead. "I promise you."

_ Don't make promises you can't keep _, Draco thought, but didn't say. He thought it'd hurt even more to say it out loud than to just let it dwell and die inside his head. He wanted to see his parents so much that it left him sick and aching even worse than he already was, but he knew he would never see them ever again.

Draco tipped his head back, instead, and Harry kissed him on the lips, fingers splayed over his cheek, under his jaw.

"Why are you so good to me?" Draco murmured, quietly, against the corner of his mouth. He tilted his head. "I wasn't good to you."

"Neither was I," Harry said, thinking of the places where the Sectumsempra sliced Draco's skin under his hands, under the shirt. "I'm sorry for what I did in the—the bathroom. I didn't know what it did."

Draco had once thought about saying a lot of things about that, but he wasn't angry anymore. He wasn't bothered by anything or anyone anymore outside of the Death-Eaters and the Dark Lord. He didn't have the energy for it. The only thing he cared for now was his parents, and Harry. "Hardly the worst thing now, is it?" Draco said.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"It's supposed to make you understand that I no longer care for it."

"I'm still sorry."

There were the distant footsteps again. Draco grew wide-eyed, pushing at him. Harry sat up, face contorted, but his eyes were fixed on Draco and it might not only be because of what last night's _ Crucios _ did to his body. Harry scooted away, putting some distance between them. The footsteps stopped outside.

The gap at the bottom of the door opened, a tray sliding in fast into the middle of the cell.

"Enjoy," Greyback's voice filtered in. The meal was hardly anything worth enjoying, as usual.

***

Only when Greyback was gone without any further words that they both breathed again, their low exhales one of relief. Harry returned back to his place beside Draco, staggering on his hands and knees. He reached out, fumbled and dragged the tray close to them.

For a moment, there wasn't anything said. Harry was thinking of asking if Draco needed help, but he wasn't sure how that would be taken. There was a pit of starvation hollowing out his gut, but the thought of eating only sickened him, and he didn't want to eat from the little that they had, because Draco needed it more.

"You should take all of it," Draco said. "You will need to keep your strength up if you want to get out."

Harry frowned, his mind catching on the lack of _ us_. "Get _ us _ out, you mean."

There was a pause, and something terrible and sick swelled up in his already sickened gut, until Draco said, "Yes. Us. But you must stay as well as you can, or else you're no good to either of us."

"I don't feel like eating." There was half a bowl of porridge, less than the usual full, and a single cup of water. "You need it more anyway."

"You can't get me out as well if you're too weak," Draco pointed out. "You're already weakened enough as it is."

"I can't get you out if you're undernourished to death." His run on the forest didn't leave him with much of a good health and wellbeing, but he, Ron and Hermione had still managed, somehow. Harry might be thinner these days, but Draco was nearly skeletal and much too sickly.

"Harry." Draco sounded tired. "Don't fight me."

"I'm not fighting with you," Harry whispered, his voice gentling. He scooted closer, adjusted his jacket over Draco's body and kissed his forehead, touching his waist. "I just want to take care of you."

Something in Draco's gaze hushed, looking up at him. He had the grayest eyes Harry might have ever seen, and even surrounded by scarlet fatigue and lassitude, they were beautiful. "We can split," he said, then, softly. "Like we're supposed to."

"It's hardly enough."

"It isn't," Draco agreed. "But that's all you get out of me."

"Let me help you."

Draco didn't give an affirmation, but neither did he protest, his gaze averted. Harry asked for permission to move him, waited on his small nod, and then carefully, he slid his hands under his body, lifted him up and laid him back against him, kissing his neck and face through his anguished sounds, through a muffled cry and strangled moans.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry…" he murmured against his cheek, frantically.

Draco quieted down under his kisses eventually, arms wrapped loosely around him. His weight was a bit too heavy for Harry's feeble and fatigued and aching body, and it took conscious, stubborn effort to not slump back onto the ground. He readjusted the jacket over him, kissed his cheek once more, and then picked up the old, rusted spoon.

He made Draco take the first two bites before Draco stopped him, eying him with an arched eyebrow.

"I'll eat. Just…" Harry lifted the spoon up to his face again.

"You first."

Harry sighed at his stubborn expression, finding his defeat inevitable in the pale and worn face of it. He put the utensil back into the bowl, picking up a spoonful and watching the sludge drop slowly back. "If you eat," he tried. "I'll kiss you."

"If _ you _ eat," Draco countered. "you get to kiss me."

  
  
  


***

  
  


Rowle didn't show up for days. Harry had desperately hoped that Greyback wouldn't either, not at night, not ever, except he did.

"Don't say anything," Draco gasped out frantically, trembling so hard in Harry's arms as he clutched at the chest of his shirt. The muffled, heavy footsteps are becoming clearer. "Don't do anything. Promise me you won't, Harry."

Harry swallowed hard. He couldn't bring himself to give that promise. He couldn't find his voice, or his words, choked by his pounding heart seized in his throat. 

Draco pushed at him without his answer, because they were short on time and Harry couldn't speak at all. He wanted to hold on and never let go, wanted to throw himself over the other boy and not let Greyback touch him, but Draco's words about the consequences of being seen with him, of them knowing all the things he felt for him, the overwhelmingly horrible image of Draco still and staring blankly at nothing, filtered in through his mind, and he let go quickly and hauled himself away just as the footsteps stopped outside.

Harry only let himself throw up after Greyback was gone, crying and gasping and shaking, curled up on his side and clutching painfully at his hair.

He moved over, carefully sidled up against Draco's back, whispering trembling lips into his neck, "It's me. It's just me. It's Harry."

He didn't know if Draco had fallen unconscious, or if he was awake but couldn't respond, couldn't speak. Part of him hoped it was the former, just because it was the only thing he could think of that would give Draco peace.

He held him as tight as he could without hurting him, dry-heaved sobs into the nape of his neck, and then desperately spent the rest of the night trying to cast a simple, wandless _ Lumos. _He tried leaping into casting an_ Alohomora _ on his shackles, thinking of how far he was from freedom, of how he wasn't able to keep Draco safe and not let anyone hurt him ever again because that might mean he wouldn't be left to save, of how afraid he was that he wouldn't be able to save Draco, to save himself, to save anyone. He missed his friends. Their faces were hazier now when he remembered them, their voices a distant memory, his mind too muddled and slow.

He fell asleep without realizing when he did and awoke next morning to Draco's body squirming against his chest, struggling to roll over.

"What are you doing?" Harry murmured.

Draco finally dropped to his back, his face ashen and twisted in agony, a cry escaping him, followed by a strangled curse. Harry helped him gently, kissing his face all over to soothe him through his movements, until Draco was facing him, his breaths shallow and fast and heavy.

"Why'd you do that?"

"Wanted to—to see you."

Harry kissed him on the corner of his mouth, ran his hand through his hair and massaged his arms and hands until his fingers ached and his arms were numb and too heavy to hold up, which wasn't a very long time. He told him about the time he came back from the barbers without getting his hair cut for the hundredth time and his Aunt Petunia got so riled up she cut his hair extremely short and left only his fringe. 

"So just imagine me almost completely bald besides some hair thrown over my forehead." 

The image made Draco break into a laugh on his shoulder, but it must have been so long since Draco had laughed that his mind and body seemed to have latched onto it, and he didn't stop until he broke down crying instead.

"You shouldn't make me laugh," Draco muttered after he calmed. "It hurts."

"I'm sorry," Harry said. Draco broke into another small snort against his shoulder, bordering on another laugh, so Harry kissed him to distract him from laughing again. "I want to tell you the last part of the story, but I probably shouldn't."

Draco was silent, and then he looked at him, quirking his lips in something that wasn't quite a smile, something a bit sadder and more twisted than a smile. "I suppose you may as well," he said. "Life seems very short these days."

"Don't say stuff like that."

"Tell me the last part of the story. Please."

"Okay," Harry said, holding him as close as he could without hurting him, wishing he could make him laugh without hurting him too. "She cried when my hair grew back magically the next morning."

Draco's breaths trembled with quiet laughter against his shirt, but he didn't laugh any more.

"But why did she do that?" Draco asked. "Leave only your fringe?"

Harry didn't want to ruin it by giving him the actual context of things. To Draco, it was just a mean aunt exhausted of his misdemeanour and the lack of order in his hair. He didn't know just how much she hated him and his parents and magic.

Harry shrugged. "I don't know."

There was silence, then.

"Tell me the last part of our story," Harry said into his hair.

Draco lifted an eyebrow, bemused.

"Harry and Draco," he said, looking down at him. "What happens to them in the end?"

"The end?"

"After they get out of here."

"They go back," Draco said, then, after a very long moment. "The Dark Lord is defeated, and they go back. You to your friends and your girl Weasley, and I to my parents."

"That's it?" Harry asked, frowning. "They just go their separate ways?"

"What happened with your girl Weasley?"

"We broke up." Harry wound his fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, thumb resting at the tender space behind his ear. "Before we went on our mission to destroy all the Horcruxes."

"Horcruxes?"

"Fragments."

"Oh," Draco said. He paused. "Do you still…"

"I do," Harry said. He cleared his throat. "I just… I don't know if we'll get back together again after."

"Because…?"

"Because I won't be the same person after," Harry said. "And she might not want who I'll be."

Draco went silent. Harry wondered if he was upset.

"Last part of the story," Draco said, with a small twist of his lips. "Harry Potter may not exactly be the same person after, but he will still be just as annoyingly noble and good as before, and girl Weasley will be cliche and boring enough to think that that's all that matters."

"You aren't upset?"

"Why should I be?"

Harry blinked. Some part of him panged with hurt at Draco's indifference. Perhaps he wasn't so far off from the truth when he'd said that Draco might not like him, but he was only all he had. Perhaps all of this wasn't real to him, not like it was to Harry.

Harry cleared his throat, suddenly feeling self-conscious, and much like a fool. He untangled himself from Draco slowly.

Draco frowned. "What…?"

"You really still don't like me much, do you?"

Draco blinked, brows furrowed together. "Don't be stupid, Harry."

His ill-health was catching up to him emotionally, it seemed, because the burst of irrational anger and hurt blazing through his chest was surprising and overwhelming.

"Do you honestly want to be stuck with a crippled lover for any amount of time outside of this cellar?"

"You say that like this is irreversible, when surely it isn't. You can still be healed. This is a world of magic, for Merlin's sake!"

"You don't want me, Potter. Believe me."

The surname stung something different now.

"You don't get to decide that."

"Don't fight me."

And then just like that, it was all gone.

Harry breathed a sigh, came closer and tangled himself up into Draco again, kissing his face. "I'm sorry."

"You're the only thing I care about now," Draco mumbled. "Outside of my parents."

Harry went back to brushing a hand through his hair.

"Last part of the story," Harry whispered. "We're just like this, but in a better place, somewhere we're safe. Somewhere we have nothing to be afraid of. We aren't in pain, and we are happy."

***

  
  


Draco spent another night in pain again, humming scrapy and off-tune into Harry's chest, and then breaking off weeping. Harry didn't know what to do, besides the usual, but the usual only helped so much.

"I'm going to fucking kill them," Harry gritted out, holding him close, when the trembling grief became trembling anger instead. "When I get out of here, I'll fucking kill them."

"Save your—your first and last kill for Him."

"They hurt you. Fucking _ Greyback_, he—" Harry trailed off, unable to speak through the lurch in his gut, much more violent than a dehydration-induced one. "He touched you."

Draco heaved and trembled in pain. Harry kissed him all over his face and his head, kneading his fingers into his arms and hands and neck, and ran his hands over his hair. He buried his face into Harry's chest again, hummed his song while his face contorted.

"Don't lose your goodness for me of all people, Harry," he said, finally, when he could speak again after a long few moments. "I'm not worth it."

"You're worth everything."

"I'm not," Draco rasped. "You're only emotional."

"You saved me."

"I thought about... not saving you." Draco swallowed hard, his eyes closed. "Just so I wouldn't…wouldn't have to be the one getting hurt. Just for one day."

"You saved me anyway."

Draco didn't speak for a moment. He buried his face into his chest and struggled to breathe, shaking. Harry kneaded his fingers into his arms and hands until it abated for a temporary moment.

"I saved the Saviour," he said, his words light wisps of air, the smallest quirk of a smile at one corner of his lips. "Makes me the Ultimate Saviour."

Harry kissed him on the lips, fingers to his face.

***

Draco's breaths are shallow and unsteady against Harry's back, bony and cold wrapped around him. Harry had gripped his arms carefully and pulled them around him, one hand clasped through his. He had used his solidity and the thoughts of freedom as motivation, but nothing seemed to be enough. He cleared his mind and focused again, trying to draw his power, his hand outstretched towards his ankle.

"_Alohomora." _

It didn't work. It hadn't worked the last forty times either. The power he tried to pull from his core only felt like a mist, a trickle.

"_Lumos,"_ he tried instead, from the very little power he could feel. His gut feeling like it was caving in into his cavity from starvation, the thirst parching his mouth and aching in his insides, the fatigue and lassitude sinking his body into the ground, the cramps stiffening his muscles from the Cruciatus curse did not help his befuddled and stretched-taut mind.

"I can't," Harry gritted out. He felt so frustrated that he wanted to break something, wanted to break down. "It's not fucking _ working."_

Draco's lips pressed against his back, a quiet encouragement.

Harry tugged his hand up tighter against his abdomen, and then tried again.

"_Lumos_."

Nothing.

He kept trying, and trying, and trying, and then he tried again, until he was sure he was going to explode.

"Take a break," Draco murmured.

Harry did. He dropped his hand, closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his terror and anger, listening to Draco inhale and exhale warm against his shirt until he calmed down some.

"Harry."

"Hm?"

Draco didn't say anything more for a moment. Harry squeezed his hand lightly.

"I might not be able to make it out," he whispered.

"Don't."

"You might have to leave me here."

"I said, _ don't._"

"You can hardly move yourself. We don't know if your friends will find you on time. How many days do we even have now, before the Dark Lord becomes well again and they call him? You might have to rely on yourself alone, wandless, and I will not be of help."

"We'll work something out."

"Either you make it out, or we both die. Those are the only two ways it can go."

"Shut up, Draco. I said we'll work it out."

"Where are you going to take me? How far can you go with the weight of my body in your hands before they catch you again?" Draco's voice is feeble and shallow breaths, but full of force and anger, torn raw through his throat. "Don't be stupid. You'll be unsafe if I'm with you."

"And since when the hell did you become so selfless?" Harry did not want him to be selfless, suddenly. Not here. Not now. He wanted him to demand that Harry get them both out, not say things that made him lose all hope like this.

"Since you," Draco said, in a heartbeat. "But it's not like I don't have a catch."

"Don't you want to see your parents?"

Draco went silent. 

"More than anything." It was hushed, but there was a hurt and longing and desperation aching in his voice. Harry felt the same sort of hurt and longing and desperation at the thought of seeing all his friends, seeing Ron and Hermione. "But I'd rather they don't see me."

"They want to see you. I saw their faces when they came to look at me. They were broken, Draco. They want you back more than anything too."

Draco didn't say anything to that. When the quiet continued to persist, Harry began to return to practicing his wandless magic, when Draco spoke up again.

"Harry."

"Yes?"

There was a pause. Harry untangled from him, shifted around to turn over and face him.

"What's wrong?" He touched his waist, brushing his thumb gently over his ribcage.

Draco looked afraid, doleful, underneath the ashen pain and exhaustion always breaking him down.

"I…" His voice was hoarse, cracking. He cleared his throat. "I wasn't that bad, was I? If I could save somebody like you, and if you could want me... I couldn't be that bad then, right?"

"You're wonderful."

"You're emotional."

Harry smiled and took his face in his hands. "You're not so bad."

"I'm glad that I saved you," Draco told him, nose against Harry's. "Saving you. It's the only good and brave thing I've ever done, I think."

Harry didn't know what to say to that, so he didn't say anything. He just kissed Draco when he tipped his head back, and then kissed him once more, and then listened to Draco talk about learning how to dance with Pansy when they were young.

"We stomped on each other's feet whenever we got annoyed at each other for getting it wrong," Draco said, his smile always wan and only barely so, always a ghost of one. "She broke my big toe once."

Harry blinked in astonishment, and then laughed, even though it pulled at his muscles and hurt his stomach.

"I can't ever dance again," Draco said, quietly, a wistful expression on his face, his eyes droopy with oncoming slumber that wouldn't really come. "I liked dancing. I want to dance with you."

Harry's chest hurt, and he thought about how much he'd like to dance with Draco, and he thought about how, for all his insistence that they would both make it out alive, there was no certainty that they would. It seemed more impossible than ever, at that moment. It seemed that life was inconceivably short.

"Let's dance," Harry whispered.

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Oh. Absolutely. Shall we do the waltz, then? Or perhaps the salsa?"

Harry huffed. "Let's settle for something much simpler." His smile faded. "Can I move you?"

On Draco's affirmation, Harry pushed himself up. He gently, so gently, pulled Draco up to his chest as well, kissed him through his pain until his breathing soothed to a shallow and unsteady state, and then asked if this was okay.

And then he began to sway, lightly, side to side, humming the song that's entrenched into his mind now from Draco's constant humming of it. Draco's grey eyes were staring up at him, the back of his head laid against his shoulder, mellow and quiet as he watched him, and in the haze of it all, the dim surrealness brought on by his mind dissociating from the world and into somewhere beyond it, nothing seemed to matter except them.

The moonlight shone its light down at the two tangled boys through the small window, echoes of soft, scrapy and off-tune humming the only sound throughout the cell.


	6. Chapter 6

The shard of sunlight was draping across Harry's face when he awoke, but it was not what woke him.

  
  


"Well, well, well. What do we have here?"

  
  


The tidal horror brought on with the voice had Harry fully sobered within a second, his body frozen around Draco's. His gaze flicked towards the direction of the voice, not quite looking, but seeing enough from the quick glance before it averted.

  
  


Rowle was standing before them, his arms crossed, wand hanging out of one hand. His pale face was smirking in amusement, staring down at them. Greyback was leaning against the wall next to him, leering at them with his head cocked.

  
  


Harry swallowed hard, closing his eyes. His breaths were coming erratically and fast. Draco was painfully still and silent, but awake as Harry opened his eyes and looked down at him, meeting his quivering and wide gaze. He seemed to be barely breathing, unable to tear his attention away from Rowle and Greyback.

  
  


Harry bowed over his body, draping over it with his own to hide him from their disgusting gaze and to hide the sight of them from him, to keep him out of their reach. He curled his trembling fingers into the back of his head and pressed Draco's face into his chest, his cheek against his hair.

  
  


"Let go of him, Potter," Rowle drawled, his wand lifting up to point at them. "Seems that he may be of some use, after all."

  
  


Draco clutched at his shirt, pulling at him weakly, his breaths beginning to grow into rapid, panicked gasps. All Harry knew was that he could not let go, because if he did-

If he did-

  
  


Rowle grabbed at the shirt of his shoulder and _ pulled _ . Harry gripped Draco tighter, and it elicited an anguished cry, but he could not let go, not ever, no matter what they said or did or what happened after this. "I _ said _, let go of him."

  
  


Harry stayed silent, breathing heavy and hard. He closed his eyes.

  
  


"Greyback," Rowle said, sounding bored.

  
  


There were big hands on his shoulders, claw nails digging into his flesh. Harry jerked away from them violently, clenching his teeth through the shiver of disgust and fear.

  
  


Draco was shaking under him as Greyback grabbed at Harry again. His arms pulled at Harry, dragged over to around him in some feeble attempt to keep Harry away from his hands. 

  
  


But Greyback was strong, and Harry was weakened, and he hauled him off in a few swift, hard jerks. Harry's arms pulled at Draco too hard and hurt him and then broke away from him. Greyback hauled him up to his knees and lugged him backwards across the ground.

  
  


"Get off of me! Get OFF OF ME!" He kicked and struggled and fought all he could, anger and horror flooding through him with adrenaline. Greyback threw him into the corner and began to turn away, and Harry lunged at him again, grabbing him by the legs and trying to drag him to the ground. "Don't- don't you fucking go near him! Don't touch him! DON'T TOUCH HIM!"

  
  


"_Petrificus Totalus_!" Rowle yelled, and Harry snapped away and fell hard to the ground, facing the whole room, facing Draco's ashen and terrified face staring back at him.

  
  


"Harry…" he whispered, as Greyback stepped away and towards him, Rowle joining him, the two of them looming over him. Draco did not look away from Harry.

  
  


Harry could not look away either, could not turn his head away or close his eyes or divert their attention, could not do anything but watch as they hurt him and hurt him and hurt him, worse and longer than they ever did.

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


"_ Finite Incantatem _," Rowle said, after it was all over, and Harry finally screamed, without any sense or words. He screamed loud and raw, pushing his face into the dust of the ground, like it had all happened to him instead.

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Draco's back was to him, sprawled still and quiet. Harry can't feel the rise and fall of his torso as he settled down behind him, dry-heaving sobs muffled between his shoulder blades and into his spine. He didn't try to check his breathing, or his heartbeat, too afraid of what he wouldn't find. He wrapped his arms around him and shook until he passed out.

  
  


He woke up without any knowledge of how long after, and Draco was still unmoving and silent. He was still sleeping. Harry stared at the back of his platinum head, barely thinking of anything, or not aware of himself thinking for hours.

  
  


He then spent more hours trying to cast _ Alohomora _ , coming back to _ Lumos _ instead when he couldn't. He didn't know what he was thinking about when there was suddenly an influx of energy shooting through his body and into his hands, and then a few big balls of light had formed above them.

  
  


Harry's eyes widened, gritty and burning. He quickly turned to Draco's back, lifting himself up on his elbows painstakingly to look down at Draco, a smile beginning to twitch at his lips. "Draco, look," he breathed. "I did it. I cast a _ Lumos _. "

  
  


Draco didn't answer. His eyes were closed, the side of his face still and slack under the yellow illumination. Harry's smile slowly faded, and he swallowed hard, lowering back down and wrapping his body around him and pushing his mouth to his back. He should let Draco sleep. He must be very tired. 

  
  


The balls of light burst into embers and disappeared. He tried to bring his power back again enough to cast an _ Alohomora _, but he couldn't.

  
  
  
  
  


***

  
  
  
  
  


There were footsteps again, several pairs of them, when Harry drifts out of his light doze again, and the sound of them wake him up fully. He burrowed closer to Draco's back, clutching at him harder, his body beginning to tremble violently of its own accord.

  
  


The heavy door was opened with a creak, and then silence, and then, "Harry?"

  
  


Harry froze.

  
  


The voice was Ron's, and then there was Hermione, whispering in a quivering breath, "Oh, Merlin." 

  
  


Harry's face twisted, overwhelming, immense relief and love and pain washing down on him. He exhaled a sound that sounded a bit like a sob as he untangled his arms from Draco's body and rolled over, and he could see them standing there now in the doorway, Hermione's bushy brown hair and brown eyes, and Ron's ginger-red hair and freckled face, his blue eyes wide as they stared at him, safe, unharmed, _ alive _.

  
  


Harry scrabbled up on his hands and feet, and they were running now, towards him, crossing the little distance of the room between them. Their knees skidded across the ground as they reached him, hands on him. Harry threw himself at them, clutching at them hard and shaking so hard he couldn't speak. There's a hand in his hair, brushing it back, Harry didn't know whose, only knew Hermione's lips against his head and her murmuring _ Alohomora _ on his chains and other spells that made him feel better, Ron's voice whispering, "we got you, mate. It's alright. We're here now. We're here."

  
  


There's somebody else in the doorway, then, long white waves of hair falling across her shoulders. Luna. 

  
  


"Harry," Hermione said, pulling away from him, but keeping her hands on his shoulders. "We have Dean on the lookout. He'll send us a Patronus to alert us, but the sooner we get out, the better."

  
  


"I can sense their energy," Luna's voice lilted from behind them, softly. "They're nearing."

  
  


Ron and Hermione look over his shoulder, seeming to notice only now the pale figure that had laid beside Harry.

  
  


"Does anybody know any healing spells?" Harry asked.

  
  


Hermione stepped forward. She handed him a wand that he didn't recognize as she did, and then knelt down to cast everything she knew, but Harry couldn't tell if it worked or not. 

  
  


"Who is he?" he vaguely registered Ron asking as he turned and lowered down on an elbow, leaning over Draco to look down at his face. He touched his shoulder with his other hand. "Draco?"

  
  


"Malfoy?" Ron mumbled to Hermione, bemused.

  
  


Draco didn't move. Harry kissed his cheek, and looked down at him again, but he was still asleep. It used to wake him, sometimes, on the days they didn't come and hurt him, and he's very badly hurt right now, but there wasn't much time. Harry moved over him, settling beside him on the other side of him and taking his face in his hands. "Draco, wake up."

  
  


Draco didn't open his eyes. Harry could feel his friends' eyes on them, the strangeness of them only just realized now to him. It hadn't seemed all too strange when they were all they had.

  
  


"Harry," Hermione said, quietly. "Harry, is he…?"

  
  


"No," Harry said, even though he didn't know. Not really. "Draco. Come on." He stroked his hair, his face, holding his cheek with the other hand.

  
  


Draco's eyes moved slightly under his eyelids, and then slowly, painfully opened, silver, beautiful, but his face was almost as grey as them and he didn't look beautiful at all, not the way he once had in school, when he was loud and boisterous, and he was healthy and well and safe.

  
  


Harry kissed him, fingers on his face, and then smiled, quivering and small. "They're here. My friends," he whispered. "We're going to get out."

  
  


Draco couldn't seem to speak, or move, but one corner of his lips twitched, and it looked more like he was trying to smile to appease Harry than anything real.

  
  


"Harry, I don't think…" Hermione trailed off. Her voice was quivering. "I don't think he can…"

  
  


"It's okay," Harry told her, without moving his gaze away from Draco. "It's alright. I'll carry him. I'm going to carry you, okay?"

  
  


Harry tried to push his arms under Draco and lift him up, but the sound Draco made, a choked gasp and cry, a violent jerk of his body that caused him even more pain, was so horrible that Harry quickly lowered him down.

  
  


Ron stepped forward in his peripheral gaze. "We could try to levitate him?"

  
  


"That's unsafe," Hermione said. "Especially if we'll have to fight."

  
  


Draco was trying to speak. Harry leaned closer, encouraging him with a hand running over his hair. 

  
  


"He looks really bad, Harry," Hermione mumbled. Harry swallowed hard. "He's in a lot of pain."

  
  


"I know what to do," Luna said from the doorway. Everyone turned to look at her. Her big eyes looked around at them back. "If he's in pain."

  
  


She drifted forward, her dress flowing around her as he lowered down beside Draco. She touched the side of his head and murmured something, and then backed away. "There. Now he won't be in pain."

  
  


Harry looked at Draco, and found his face smoothed into something that almost looked like peace. Whatever Luna had done, it had taken away all of his pain. His eyes were open, looking at Harry.

  
  


Harry smiled, touched Draco's cheeks. "Hi."

  
  


There was a ghost of a smile at one corner of Draco's lips at the sight of him.

  
  


"I'm going to pick you up now, okay?" Harry said. His body still ached, was still weak, but he couldn't afford to let that slow him. The spells Hermione had casted on him did better him significantly at least. He tried to push his arms under him again, but Draco's hand was on his, then, slow, cold.

  
  


"I'm afraid," he murmured, in a light wisp of a voice. "it can't be."

  
  


"Draco, we don't have time-"

  
  


"Carrying a dead boy, Harry." 

  
  


And if Harry would have let himself see it at that moment, he would have thought that Draco did look like a dead boy. He was grey and blue-lipped and broken. He was barely breathing, and he was dying, but Harry didn't want to see that and so he said, "You're not dead, and you're not going to be dead, because I'm saving you like I promised you I would."

  
  


"Can't save everyone." Draco looked like he had made his peace with that long ago, like he had already known since the start that he wasn't meant to be saved. "even if you're the Saviour."

  
  


"Fuck this," Harry gritted out, and went to pick him up.

  
  


"Mate, I don't think you should…" Ron was saying. He paused, and then cleared his throat. "I don't think he'd…" 

  
  


Harry knew what he wasn't able to say, and suddenly he felt like he was blind to something that the others were seeing clearly.

  
  


"Last part of the story," Draco's lips quirked in that horrible and frail way again. "They both become free."

  
_Only in different ways._

It came down on him like a tsunami, then, suffocating him underwater, filling his lungs, his throat, his whole body. It weighed down on his shoulders, the understanding, the realization, the truth, the raw and bare grief of it all.

  
  


Harry kissed him, hard, and when he broke away and came up, his breaths were heaves for air, the dark and heavy of his tsunami grief washing down on him and threatening to drown him whole. He put his forehead to his forehead. "I'm so sorry," he gasped.

  
  


Draco shook his head, the slightest of movement. "Don't be. You made me happy."

  
  


Harry shook his head, his contorting painfully tight. "I can't do this," he choked out. "Merlin, I can't…"

  
  


"Go save the world, Harry, and my parents," Draco murmured in his ear. Harry held him as hard and tight as he could because it wouldn't hurt him now and it didn't matter. He couldn't speak, couldn't make a sound. "And be so happy with her that you forget this awful place, and me."

He held Draco until his arms had loosened around him, until he wasn't breathing against his shoulder, until he was gone.

  
  


He was gone.

  
  


"That's Dean's Patronus," Hermione said, her voice quivering. "Harry, we have to go. We have to go now!"

  
  


Going meant letting him go, and it meant leaving him here, leaving his body here for all of them to take, and it meant never seeing him again or kissing him or holding him close, never having him with him again, and he could not go. He could not let go.

  
  


But there were hands on his shoulders, hauling him back, hauling him away from him. Somebody was yelling, and it was him, but he was underwater and the world around him was muffled and distorted and surreal. The only thing he could see was Draco lying on his back, his face full of a peace that was long-awaited, and how further away he went from him. Harry did not get to close his eyes. He did not get to put him to sleep. 

  
  


He couldn't see Draco anymore. They were out of the cell, then, and freedom didn't quite feel like freedom when Draco wasn't coming with him.

  
  


He was drowning in that tsunami grief, shaking, crying, his ears ringing, the only sounds clear his own heaving and gasping for air. He was standing against a wall, he was sliding down it, he was gripping his hair, his head full of him. Draco was screaming as they hurt him, crying into his shirt in the dead of night from the agony of a body that they broke, and he was laughing against his shoulder, and he was watching Harry in the dark and silent as he soothed him to sleep, and he was whispering everything that had ever scared him or made him happy against his chest, and he was sickly and frail and smiling at him, and Harry had loved him. He had loved him more than he'd ever thought possible to love a boy that he had once loathed.

  
  


Somebody's hands were on his shoulders, face against his cheek, murmuring apologies in a soft voice.

  
  


"Harry," Hermione whispered. "Harry, you have to be strong."

Harry heaved for air, his mind racing with thoughts of him, of them, of everything that had happened in that cellar. His fists clenched his hair until it hurt, his face buried into his knees.

Ron and Dean were yelling for Hermione. She squeezed his hand, once, and then she stood up and ran to help them.

It went still and quiet, then, in the midst of chaos and noise echoing throughout from behind him. The ringing in his head. The sounds of his own struggle for air. The memories racing frantic and overwhelming through his mind. Like breaking out of the surface of water, a clarity and calm settling in inside of him.

It settled in his chest and on his face like hardened cement.

Harry swiped a hand across his face, his breaths beginning to even out, his heart beginning to steady. He dragged himself up to his feet as he raised his wand. He pushed off the wall, turning the corner, where he could see his friends at the lines of the battlefield, where he could see _them_. He ran forward.

The path ahead was lit with green.


End file.
